Proposal: Redesign Nether Precision

Classes Mage
1

Current Nether Precision: Consuming Clearcasting increases the damage of your next 2 Arcane Blasts or Arcane Barrages by 20%.

Proposed Nether Precision: Consuming Clearcasting increases the damage of your next Arcane Barrage by 20% and causes it to grant 4 Arcane Charges.

Recently there has been an outcry in the mage community regarding the hotfix announced last week and implemented today which removed the ability to double dip Burden of Power via the spell queueing system, something that has always existed in the game but which Blizzard have recently decided they see as a “bug” or rather an unintended interaction. My proposal entirely sidesteps the thorny spell queueing/double dipping issue while retaining what players enjoyed about the old rotation.

The double dipping in question was primarily used to benefit a cast of Arcane Barrage queued at the end of the second Arcane Blast cast in a Nether Precision sequence and led to a rotation that many people enjoyed very much. An enjoyment brought on by the ability to finally intergrade Arcane Barrage into the single target Arcane rotation in a more frequent and meaningful way, something that has proven very difficult to do in the past despite many efforts to make it happen.

The War Within expansion introduced a brand new mechanic to the Arcane toolkit in the form of various ways for Arcane Barrage to automatically refund the Arcane Charges it spends. At present this can be done via the Glorious Incandescence and Arcane Soul talents in the Sunfury hero talent tree and the 4 piece bonus of the Spark of Violet Renewal Rebirth tier set.

Imo, the introduction of this new mechanic has been the greatest leap forward for the Arcane since the invention of sliced conjured mana buns! It feels very smooth to play and is an elegant solution to the longest lasting problem that has plagued the spec: the inability to work Arcane Barrage into the single target rotation due to the glacial pace at which Arcane Blasts generate Arcane Charges. Since basically forever that has meant Arcane’s single target rotation was been dominated by the monotonous 4 Charge Arcane Blast spam but now we finally have to tool that could break that cycle (by giving Arcane Barrage ways it can refunds its Charges) and in my view it should be doubled down on.

The people have spoken and they want to cast more Arcane Barrages/Arcane Missiles and less Arcane Blasts so lets make that happen! Who is with me?

P.S. The proposed changes to Nether Precision can be tuned in many different ways. The number of Arcane Barrages it effects can be moved up or down, as can the damage increase percentage. Additionally, the Nether Precision proc could be made to stack up to 3 times to allow for back-to-back use of Clearcasting Arcane Missiles into a powerful Arcane Barrage that will be buffed not only by the Nether Precision but also talents like Arcane Harmony or Arcane Bombardment and thus synergize really well with other talents. It will also effectively make High Voltage defunct which imo would be a good thing as it is very unreliable and generally lackluster as a capstone talent.

2 Likes
2

Careful now. This proposal sounds like way to much fun.

4 Likes
4

Spellslinger kind of wouldn’t function with this redesign.

5

Sure it would. Spellslinger only cares about consuming the NP proc, it doesn’t matter which spell consumes it. It will just need to be tuned differently for Spellslinger. There are dozens of the examples of the same talent working differently for different hero specs.

6

This could be fun. I like that it applies to Arcane Blast as well, but this change would encourage less degenerate Arcane Blast spamming.

1 Like
7

Given that Hero Trees are supposed to be evergreen, I’m not sure this change is necessary (unless Blizzard backtracks and we lose Hero Trees at the end of the expansion - which we’ll have to wait for and see).

Personally, I think Nether Precision (as it is now) was one of the best things to happen to arcane for a long time. I was excited for its introduction in Shadowlands (but sadly it was super nerfed and super buggy at that time).

Maybe I’m losing focus these days, but I almost never feel like I’m spamming Arcane Blast - especially as Sunfury. Historically, Blast has been both our filler and our highest damage dealer (not biggest hitter. A majority of our damage output comes from this spell). It’s a weird concept to a lot of people but if you’re able to spam Blast without going oom, you’re probably doing a decent amount of damage (at least single target).

It’s easily possible these values have changed in this expansion. I didn’t play on the beta and I’ll reserve my judgement for that when there’s real content to do. But if it hasn’t, the existing Nether Precision serves a pretty big purpose: It extends the value of our clearcasting procs. The existing rotation (in a bubble, in single target) is Missiles → Blast → Blast/Barrage → fish for procs. The proposed change would make the rotation Missiles → Barrage → fish for procs.

Right now, a clearcasting proc is giving us ~3 global cooldowns worth of value (clipped missiles (which is another problem altogether), 2 blasts which for me are about the same cast time as my global). The proposed change will make it only 2 (missiles, barrage). Damage numbers can be tuned to make that proc more impactful, but in terms of flow, I think we’d be hurting here. We’re already complaining about not having enough CC procs. Reduce its impact on rotation by 33% and it’s going to hurt even more.

I know the easy solution to that would be to have it apply to the next two barrages instead of one, but I’ll be honest with you: If I wanted to be an instant-cast caster, I’d switch to fire. There’s a good degree of fantasy and immersion around actually needing to cast spells and I’m not sure I’d be happy if that much of my rotation was instant cast, especially consecutive casts. I also worry that something like this would make the rotation a bit too easy (and it would certainly be the end of mana-as-a-resource, but I’m okay with that).

My guess is that the reason that Burden of Power and Nether Precision buff both Blast and Barrage is so that it can be useful in both Single Target and AoE scenarios. The problem is that Blizzard seems to think Barrage is our only AoE spell and that it’s rarely going to be used in single target. The reason the double dip works and exists is because we only have one spender (a problem I know a lot of us, you included if I recall, think needs to be addressed).

If we had a different spender for single target vs. Aoe or if some of these procs would buff a different AoE spell (explosion or Orb or perhaps acting like Aether Attunement and making missiles AoE), a lot of the spellqueuing problems would be gone. Blizzard just keeps trying to make barrage do too many things.

8

I used to think that too but I’ve since changed my mind for one very simple reason: the inherent conflict between Nether Precision and Clearcasting which was never resolved. It lead to the truncating of CC AMs and only served to effectively double down on AB’s supremacy in single target situations. If we want to get rid of the 4 charge AB spam NP can’t buff AB or it will never happen.

It certainly feels less oppressive because it’s now punctuated by an ABarr consuming the Burden of Power/Glorious Incandescence proc every 6 casts but we still end up casting it way too much still and it will feel even better if it’s further punctuated every time NP procs as well. Plus if NP only buffs ABarr there is a nice little synergy with Arcane Harmony too.

Well I am being realistic here, Blizzard are unlikely to go for anything other than an easy solution at this stage. There won’t be another deep dive rework until halfway through the expansion, if then.

Again, I completely agree and I’ve said it many times but these are long term goals. I am looking for a quick and simple fix to the mess they’ve created with the removal of the double dipping because people are literally up in arms over it. All the goodwill we’ve established with the devs during the development of TWW is going to evaporate if people keep calling them names and being so angry over this fiasco. You can already see the vitriol spilling over from Discord and the forums and onto social media and YouTube.

9

To be fair, there’s a much easier fix to this problem: Make missiles deal more damage.

They took away the ability to cast it without a proc because they “couldn’t balance it properly” but then proceeded to… not balance it properly? At the very least, most of the bugs around slipstream seem to be gone…

That’s a fair point. I guess I still function under the delusion that Blizzard actually responds to our feedback and will make appropriate changes. And the delusion that mages are the only spec in the game :wink:.

10

Yeah, exactly… idek what to say about that anymore. I am trying really hard not to be combative with my criticism and feedback (anymore :cowboy_hat_face:) but they’re really not making it easy, lol.