On Season of Discovery, Wrath of Cenarius does not work properly with Arcane Missiles. When Arcane Missiles hit the target, they never activate the ring with I believe is a bug, as many other items with the same wording do work, such as Blade of Eternal Darkness, Lightning’s Cell and Stormwrath, Sanctified Shortblade of the Galefinder.
I would highly appreciate a bug fix on this issue as getting this item was not trivial.
This is how Arcane Missiles interacts with items in vanilla.
This is how Wrath of Cenarius works in Era as well to my knowledge.
The initial cast of Arcane Missiles can proc the item, but not the impact.
Arcane Missiles is, in essence, a channeled spell like Mind Flay but every tick it casts another spell at your channeled target that does not count as a spell cast for the Mage in a lot of cases (this being one of them).
This is why you can hit Arcane Missiles and then turn around and you’ll continue to channel, but no missiles will come out. You are channeling the spell, the spell is casting the missiles.
This is labeled as Not A Bug.
Thanks for answering about this.
Though I do not believe that is correct, because as mentioned earlier, every hit of Arcane Missiles can currently trigger Blade of Eternal Darkness, Lightning’s Cell, Stormwrath, Sanctified Shortblade of the Galefinder, not just the “snap to target” part. I’ve never noticed if those do trigger on the snap part, but they absolutely do for each missile shot. I’ve confirmed it personally for 2 of these items, and other mages have confirmed for the other.
Wrath of Cenarius should trigger in the same way those 3 mentioned items trigger with arcane missiles, as their tooltips say generally the same thing. The way I see it, either Wrath of Cenarius’s tooltip is wrong, or it is bugged. There was no way for me to differentiate between Stormwrath’s tooltip and Wrath of Cenarius’s tooltip. Any way I read them, they should either both trigger, or not at all.
As for Vanilla, here’s an example of an effect that can trigger on each missile hit that i have personally confirmed, the Frostfire Regalia 6set bonus : https://www.wowhead.com/classic/spell=28771/elemental-vulnerability Another example is Judgement of Wisdom, which has 50% chance to trigger on every missile hit.
And speaking of Vanilla, multiple commenters on Wowhead from 20 years ago do mention that Wrath of Cenarius did trigger on individual missiles : https://www.wowhead.com/classic/item=21190/wrath-of-cenarius but some seem to mention that it stopped working circa patch 1.12.
Arcane Missiles has always been a wonky spell that defies all norms, that’s for sure.
Spell Blasting has a specific line in its script calling out Arcane Missiles to only proc on the cast of Arcane Missiles and not on each bolt. So it appears intentional.
The proc for Spell Blasting is Deal Harmful Spell → Land
The proc for Blade of Eternal Darkness is Deal Harmful Spell → Damage
So Spell Blasting procs off the cast landing and BoED procs off whenever the spell deals damage. The landing of the spell is the initial cast for Arcane Missiles and Spell Blasting.
Wording on tooltips is basically not law, wow isn’t really a rules as written game when it comes to tooltips, as many are the same but function differently.
Arcane Missiles is treated differently in a lot of different scripts.
For example there is a special script to prevent it from consume multiple charges of Zandalarian Hero Charm so it only consumes one stack instead of a stack every pulse.
TL;DR Arcane Missiles is treated on a case by case basis and there is a clear line in Spell Blasting that treats it in this manner. So based on intent from 2004 this is labeled Not A Bug.
Wow that’s super interesting. Love the under the hood insight into those triggers.
I know tooltips aren’t law and they are sometimes wrong, but that’s the only thing we players have to go with to know whether something will work or not.
In my opinion Arcane Missiles would benefit both players and devs for it to be handled as 5 separate 0 mana spellcasts, but that’s another discussion entirely.