You have the data, you have the performance stats for both Raid and M+; we all do.
Arcane is second worse only comparable to Aug. Please buff it.
Remember that Arcane is completely target capped in a season with large pulls. Please consider changing this. There are a number of ways you can address this, the one that makes the most sense to me is making Touch of the Magi no longer fall off after 1 target, but after 8 targets. Figure out which spell you want to buff and please implement it early this season.
Another thing players have been complaining about in the mage discord is the CDR from Shifting Power; how it makes Touch of the Magi go from 45 seconds to 33 seconds cooldown. This is bad because it desyncs that ability from the Mechagon staff (Neural Synapse Enhancer), which just feels bad.
Another thing players have complained about is that Sunfury isnāt great in M+ either. The Arcane Soul change was great but it has nowhere near the Barrage spamming potential that Spellslinger has, and the difference in Barrage damage, even in Execute, really isnāt that much between the two in AoE (sure the SF Barrages hit harder in Execute, but you spam so much more with SS hero tree that it makes up for it).
Iām completely fine if you want to nerf fire as well, just please do not leave Arcane dead in the water for yet another season.
10 Likes
Arcane needs a blanket buff fore sure - we are way behind.
Arcane can only perform well on 5 target cleave at the moment. On single target and large pulls, it suffers real bad. Part of this is because too much power is tied into Arcing Cleave + Resonance. We also have an issue of having a ton of power tied into execute range - my ST Barrages feel incredibly weak until I hit the 35% mark.
Iād like to see Arcane Bombardment and Resonance nerfed and Barrage hugely buffed so that Barrage isnāt so dependent on these circumstances.
I still also really want to see Prodigious Savant made baseline and then the talent tweaked to be ā+Mastery and 10% more Mastery from all sourcesā and then placed further up the tree. Frost gets a Haste version and Fire gets a Crit version of this - Arcane should get a Mastery one. (Savantās undertuned nature is also part of the reason why the entire bottom-right chunk of our tree is seeing zero play)
Intuition should be RPPM with a higher proc (and slightly lower damage bonus to compensate).
Energy Reconstitution should NOT be RPPM. Absolutely kills the talent. Let us spread Dematerialize and have explosions be popping off left and right.
I have other suggestions but honestly Blizzard shouldnāt be completely revamping Arcane just yet so Iāll hold off on going too far down the talent-change suggestion rabbit hole.
4 Likes
Omg I didnāt realize the race would finish up so quickly. Iām so happy since now they actually might really balance some underperformers right away, especially with all the data from the raid logs they have available now.
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+1
Buff Arcane pls! (needs a hefty buff and Frost a bit too) <3
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So digging more into data:
Right now in M+ the top end arcane mages are doing upwards of 2.5M, with the average in high keys being about 2M. The top end specs are averaging at around 2.3M, with the very top ends being about 3.2M. That means arcane mages are about 10-20% behind in M+, which honestly isnāt too terrible.
However, when I look at heroic Sprocketmonger parses - a pure single target raid fight - top end parses are averaging around 2.2-2.3M. Top end Fire mage parses are averaging around 2.1M. Top end arcane parses, however, are topping at about 1.6M. This means that arcane is about 40% behind on single target DPS. Let that sink in.
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I believe it too. Arcane Blast damage is disgustingly bad. Arcane Blast burn phases on single target are a huge staple to Arcane spec, and they just likeā¦ I donāt knowā¦ wanted Arcane to be a proc fishing spec now, I guess? Any meaningful damage is only coming from Arcane Missiles and Arcane Barrage. Itās criminal that Arcane Blast damage is as low as it is. It makes zero sense too because itās meant to be an āOPā filler spell thatās reined in by its high mana consumption.
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Our single target spells in general are just way too undertuned. Arcane Barrage can hit hard with all the buffing effects stacked together, but itās a real planets-aligned scenario and also heavily leans into execute phase damage amp.
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Itās honestly astonishing how small the numbers on Arcane Blast are when it used to be one of the highest hitting abilities in the game.
2 Likes
It took my breath away when I was doing some delves testing all 3 specs. Arcane Blast full pumping into a mob doing sub 500K dps. Meanwhile, Frostfire Bolt is hitting for 700K to 1M for me a lot of times on Frost spec. Make it make sense!
I have to do delves as Frost anyway for the slows. If you donāt kite pulls, you just die.
Frostfire Bolt on Fire spec makes it so nice actually too. But certainly, Frost is the best soloing spec. I actually found playing tank Brann recently to be fine compared to the start of the season. He dies sometimes in long boss/miniboss fights, but you just pop Mirror Image to take aggro off of you, and you rez him which only takes a second. Then you finish the fight ez-pz. After fights, you have to stand literally perfectly still, and he will start eating and heal up in like 3 seconds.
I think them buffing tank Brann so he doesnāt take so much random AoE damage made the spec actually viable to play without it being utterly terrible. Also, upgrading the curio things probably helps a lot.
I wish this entire expansion would end alreadyā¦ I havenāt been so dispirited since SL and TWW is shaping up to make me quit it early just like I did with SL. As far as I am concerned WoW ended at the end of Legion right before the meme sword came down, almost everything since then has been a travesty.
No amount of buffs, if they ever even materialize, will fix the mess they made of the spec at the start of the expansion which has only been compounded by one bad decision after another since then. The complete rework that is necessary to make Arcane a functional spec that is fun to play and fits into the modern paradigm of the game is not something they are likely to do in the middle of an expansion, if indeed ever, and I for one am fed up with waiting.
Iām really holding out hope that the fated Metzenās Influenceā¢ rumor turns out to be true. Apparently, the story and work for most of early TWW was done by the Dragonflight team and Metzenās influence should start to show in 11.2 with the Ethereals and such, then certainly into the Midnight expansion.
Iām not sure how much this might affect the gameās actual mechanical parts like class design to bring the conversation back to Arcane spec. Butā¦ Iām really hoping to at least get some Legion style pizzazz again. I guess itās faith in green jesus here a little bit.
Trust me though, I completely feel your pain about how butchered Arcane is. Iām a Frost spec enjoyer more so, and during Shadowlands was my true low moment for Frost. That was probably the worst iteration of the class for me until the rework in Dragonflight. I donāt know why theyāre flopping on Arcane so badly, but Iām praying they straighten it out and actually listen to player feedback ASAP.
I think he is only in charge of the story arc. The story is cool but it is what ā¦ 5 hours of play a season and another 10 for the xpac.
Blizzard has shown they are not able to keep balance up with the content. Mythic Gallywix is the big example right now.
They were already bad at balancing before they redesigned arcane core rotation abilities mid season ā¦ FOUR TIMES
They donāt realize they are effectively deleting the game for some of us
No I know that. I just hoped it might spark a wave of Legion-like success gamewide.
I think the cadence and rapidity they are trying to keep up with is causing a bit of a āchild left behindā effect with certain parts of the game. Arcane spec being one example. Many bugs being another.
They simply donāt have the time to focus and fine tune anymore it seems like anyway. I wish the company would hire more people because I know in my soul the game devs are doing the best they can, and theyād have a lot more room to breathe. A massive game like this needs good quality assurance, but itās like itās taking a back seat or something so they can keep the train pushing forward.
All conjecture from the way things look as an outsider of course though.
2 Likes
I think this is the core of their biggest mistake with this game. They are essentially trying to make a new game every season now. The problem is, it is very hard to make a good game every 6 months.
I agree that they could stand to hire a few more people to fix some of the problems theyāve created, but I think their plan is flawed to the core and throwing people and money at it wonāt fix the underlying problem.
The problem: They kept class/spec changes in sync with the rest of the game when they increased the pace of new content. To fix this, they need to de-sync new content, and class changes.
I appreciate that they are releasing new content, but they could save themselves a lot of time and agony if they were slower at adding new things/changing specs in a big way and instead got each one to a good place. People will still enjoy the new storylines and the new raids without having their class redesigned on them every season.
Yes, people want new things, but they donāt want a new rotation every 6 months. And because Blizzard is trying to re-invent the wheel, weāre getting bugs as fast as new features. Bad balance as fast as new features.
If you took away the bad class balance then adding new story lines, new raids, adding new dungeons, new side quests etc, would be objectively really fun.
Blizzard would be free to be creative instead of staring at spreadsheets
The company really needs someone to step up and be a visionary, and guide them away from all of this noise. Maybe Metzen is the one to do it, maybe someone else, but SOMEONE needs to or this game will get worse and worse while they throw more and more money at it
āWeād rather you just didnāt play arcane.ā
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Liberation of Undermine Heroic - Spec Popularity vs Average Overall DPS : r/wow
Sure feels that way. This chart shows Arcane is currently the lowest DPS and least played spec in Heroic Raid.
Because thereās just no reason to play Arcane from a performance standpoint. Arcane has become very proc-based, which is already how Frost plays and Frost is just better. And if you are a performance-based player, Fire is just objectively the best mage spec.
Arcane used to have great burst damage with their CDās but even that has been killed by how strong Fire can burst at the moment.
In summary, Arcaneās balancing is so scuffed it is effectively a dead spec right now. The only other spec that has things worse is Augmentation.
I hadnāt played fire in almost 2 years, beyond switching to the spec briefly here and there.
A couple days ago I joined some random content to test it out and it is so much less work to get more damage. My rotation is very sub-optimal, Iām doing a bad job maintaining buffs, forgetting to use SKB into combustion, lots of noob mistakes and Iām still getting better damage.
At this point I do think this is a āweād rather you not play arcaneā moment
the problem is, I donāt enjoy fire. Iām not looking for world first keys but going this far off meta means others will start confrontations, and it will be agony getting into groups etc. I just donāt want to deal with it. Iāve started gearing a pally ā at least that will be a reliable way to get this seasonās achivements and hope for a better season 3
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