Imagine being Blizzard and seeing Arcane Mage is the worst spec in the game with no single target and is unable to hit any elevated enemies or participate in combat on elevated platforms, has massive issues surviving any form of damage even with healers pumping massive single target healing in to them, and has a rotation everyone and their dog has described as “dipping your junk in to an open electric socket and letting the watts zap you, then willingly doing it again” only to decide to nerf it and make their rotation SOMEHOW even worse.
Real pat on the back guys, way to save the spec, well done.
I’m so glad I benched this castrated disaster of a class this xpac.
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“Working as intended.”
“We’d prefer you not play arcane.”
“We have to do better. But we won’t.”
Take your pick.
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“We’d rather you play Frost since we just reworked it”
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That’s very explicit… 
Not inaccurate, mind, just very explicit. 
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You have to be a masochist to want to play Arcane Mage in Midnight so I was looking for an adequately grotesque analogy.
Playing Midnight Arcane Mage is like any scene from Home Alone.
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They could literally buff arcane 20% across the board and it still wouldn’t be in the top specs.
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A 100% damage buff to Arcane Missiles would not make it an OP spell.
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Nope, that would be just fine. And while we’re on it, since it’s apparently beyond the designer’s ability to alter the spec in any positive way, here’s some ideas just off the top of my head:
Shields now absorb triple damage. Does not apply in pvp.
Salvo now caps at 10 stacks (damage is the same pre-spec buff as the old 20 stacks).
Arcane surge is now instant. This 2.5+ second, stand still and pray for no mechanics garbage has to end.
Icy Flows is returned.
Reactive Shielding is returned.
Arcane blast and surge mana costs reduced 25%.
20-25% blanket buff to damage. Can be adjusted either way if it’s still too weak or strong.
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Definitely a masochistic streak for sure. Although, I have to admit I kinda get a kick out of looking at the overrall damage at the end of an M+ run and seeing myself at the top knowing I play a gimped spec.
I don’t flatter myself into thinking it’s because I am a phenomenal player and fully attribute it to the fact that I PuG with randos at odd hours (since I no longer have the time for dedicated group play) but still, it tickles me. 
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this happened a lot to me, even with ppl 10-15 ilvl higher
still feels the effort isn’t rewarded enough and that a few buffs/fixes wouldn’t be so bad.
AOE buff through Arcane Echo talents would be nice (not played actually, way too undertuned)
Blast base damage/Blast damage by charge through mastery could get at least 20%/10% buff (maybe way more)
Barrage could get the execute back or give back more salvo depending on how low enemy hp is
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In Midnight, we want Mage barriers to be potent, consistent and reliable
The community has made it clear that Aethervision’s more prescriptive gameplay is not the direction they wish to see Arcane move in.
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Hopefully they revisit this. It was fine for a while, scaling issue IMO and I do think they tried, but too many other things broke, which probably pushed them to extend it into the next round. They’re still reworking other classes, so I can see why they’d want to finish that before another wave of talent tuning. At this pace, it’s looking like next patch.
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They just sledgehammed arcane in the dump
But FrostFire been dead since its lauch
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Arcane just seems all around the worst spec in the game. Lowest damage, lowest survivability, no ability to kite. It’s awful to play in dungeons, raids, or solo content. I don’t know about PvP but I can’t imagine it’s any good there either.
How are they happy with the current state of it?
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I don’t think it’s a case of happy or unhappy. More a case of they don’t know what to do with arcane, they don’t really care and they likely don’t have the resources to fix either now that the new overlords are in charge.
Arcane has always been the odd spec out for WOW mages, a class with so much potential but stuck in 2006 with antiquated mana management gameplay and limited spells. Blizzard developers seem for whatever reason unwilling to remove mana from the equation or let the spec be good for more than about 2 weeks tops. Just from recent memory, it was obliterated with unnecessary and poorly thought out nerfs at the beginning of War Within (remember when we were destroying bosses in dungeons that lasted 30s but when dungeons got harder our dps dropped?) and now in Midnight. They also love to design enemies and bosses like Ellisande with cool arcane spells but seem to want arcane mages to have no more than 4 that are used more than 2-3 times a fight.
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Exactly. Although this situation is actually worse because if they had just left well enough alone and kept the version of Arcane that emerged towards the end of TWW everything would have been just peachy. But instead they thoroughly wasted whatever development time they devoted to the Midnight rework (and I do hope for their sake it wasn’t much because if it took long to make such bad choices that’s just sad) by making a complete mess of the spec.
Arcane is so utterly broken rn that I don’t expect any meaningful changes until the mid expansion major patch, at the earliest, just because of how much work it needs. It’s far more likely that Arcane doesn’t see any major changes at all and is relegated to being a bottom tier spec as usual.
It is absolutely inexcusable that they haven’t at the very least rolled out simple damage buffs in the meantime though. It’s tragic.
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They did know, then they decided to remove it because for some reason they refuse to allow Arcane to be a good, normal, respectable spec.
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Recall the “no Ice Lance” (noIL) build, where Frost Mages intentionally avoided casting Ice Lance for single-target DPS in BFA. Those where the days .. oh wait ..
I liked TWW arcane mage having played it the entire S3, but the current iteration of arcane isn’t as terrible as others say. In raid it is very weak, but in M+ it is decent. I benched my mage after spending a lot of time on it. I didn’t like the direction they took with frost/arcane. I did like the fire mage changes but the fact I do little damage outside of my cd’s was the dealbreaker for me.