I think if they gave arcane mages a wee bit more utility along with some numbers tweaking it would make us more competitive. Just off the top of my head changing our mana gems to 25% of mana and making them party wide like health stones would be huge. Changing it so that everything that gets hit by the totm explosion is slowed would be another. I also think we should be able to get an arcane golem pet. They were all over the legion order hall so it’s already baked into the lore. Maybe let us change into ravens like khadgar too.
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Even that may not be enough. As what was said, fire has the burst, downtime and more reliable way to execute that burst in multi target and single target. But, then what you offered with slows is already covered by frost as well with consistent damage output (and even burst if Blizzard ever reinvigorate the glacial spike build). The golem pet would also mean nothing there since, again, frost has a pet as well with more valuable utility. That arcane golem would only ever be useful if it would cover support for the entire party, but even then, why would anyone bring an arcane mage for that trade off on damage from frost or fire? And from the players (the mage) perspective, why would they ever go as arcane for so much hassle only for burst that may not even be able to compare to fire in reliability and damage overall?
To add onto this, I honestly think the only way for them to really give fire and arcane an identity that doesn’t make them conflict with each other is to revert fire back to the big dot damage spec. As for arcane, the only thing aside for some damage buffs here and there, is for them to adjust mastery and the way mana is used for the spec. Right now the 3 different damage modifiers in its mastery is not necessary. It all needs to just be one with all of their damage benefiting from charges or at least 1 big modifier for arcane blast and the rest having another along with the charges buffing their damage. Mana management hasn’t really felt all that impactful aside from maintaining an old playstyle that serves to just be something that’s there. The last time mana management felt like it had a great trade off for how it functioned was in WoD where the more mana you had the more damage you did at all times, which then translated to bigger burst and more damage outside of that burst windows as a good trade off for proper mana management. It may have been more strict than it is now, but at least it made mana a very powerful resource unlike now where, as I’ve said it’s just there to either annoy you or… just there. You don’t really gain much from it even with proper management unlike fire which has the same burst and wait playstyle, but without the annoying factor of mana being a thing that serves to be an annoyance.
I’m not getting good results with Kyrian. When it works its great. But I’m finding it a bit too hard to reliably execute the once per 45 second ABar. I don’t know the fights well enough to time it properly.
Perhaps it’s time to try a different covenant. Venthyr maybe? What lego should I use with Venthyr?
With just a little effort it isnt hard to get the 45 sec windows down. I think you should just mainly focus on when its best to hold it for a second as to not waste it which is very few fights tbh.
If movement is a problem I recommend holding PoM for times you would have to move, you can also throw in arcane orb/arcane explosion (if close enough) to add a stack to the build if movement is an issue. It will do less damage then that 4th blast but at least it guarantees your burst getting off.
which fights do you think your issue is mainly on?
My issue is when I crit, im top 5 and its fun enough and all that, but if I dont im bottom 5 and that is some rough variance on the charts xD.
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Jaina does this thing at times where she blocks projectiles and shields herself and those around her with an Arcane spell. It’s actually an interesting concept that I feel should be explored more. She uses it in BFA when she attacked Zandalar, and even against Anduin at the end of the fight.
However,
This will always be a reality. DPS aren’t picked as much for their side utility as they are for their actual damage now. Even hybrid taxes don’t really exist anymore. Arcane’s survival kit even right now is insane, but it remains unpopular.
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I will offer a few alternative suggestions, Venthyr has alot of timings aswell assuming you use evocation leggo and knowing the burst windows would be important for good results.
In raid, I have found that necro is performing well enough with its passive bonus with many legendary options to get mid level results, 3 target cleave works well on many of the fights, then just swap your leggo based on AOE or ST requirements.
For M+ I prefer the bombardment leggo, this work best with NF. Korayn’s has some nice passive synergies.
This build is less of a burst profile and more of consistent damage. Heavy damage on the top end and on the bottom.
Key skills for Passive Combo :
Incanter’s Flow - Damage Boost
Enlighted - Damage Boost
Wild Hunt Tactics - Damage Boost into TOTM
First Strike - Crit on the boosted damage
2 -Piece Tier - Boost on already amped damage.
Enlighted offers a constant damage bonus this has synergy with 4pc mana regen and also killing Urg has become meta, for Mana Regen and CDR. This talent has much more uptime then previous session when it was regarded poorly.
Example - WoW Arcane Mage 9.2 M+ Build Night Fae Bombardment INSANE DAMAGE - YouTube
I agree with your point on the 4 piece. It’s so dumb, at first I was really excited to finally get my 5 piece cause that’s what we really end up with due to leggo being on gloves, but then I quickly realized in M+ it’s just such a huge waste. I’d figure at around 21+ it would be actually pretty useful. Don’t get me wrong when a pack lives long enough it feels great to crank out an extra arcane barrage with an extra missile channel but most of the time it’s damage lost. To be honest 4 piece feels more like a nerf than anything. Plus another thing is like, what does the extra 4 seconds do for us exactly? We’ve gotten so used to squeezing in the damage at the perfect time frame, that 4 extra seconds seems almost like a waste. Like what you want me to throw 2 to 3 more channels of arcane missiles? I was gonna do that anyway.
Well arcane could be in the state demo locks were in. This time blizzard learned to keep their mouths shut. You see blizzard once said they’d rather people didn’t play demo lock because they were changing it next expansion.
Which they did and they gave meta to demon hunters and blah blah blah so on and so forth.
Leaks lately have been saying envoker is the next class. Which would steal spells from arcane. So maybe they are leaving trash so they can do the same thing. That is a random thought nothing more. It could just be that they don’t want to buff the spec. So no need to get worked up.
There have been so many leaks of so many different classes that I don’t believe a single one of them. We’ll see how things turn out tomorrow at the expansion reveal.
But then again, that’s a poor excuse to leave an underperforming spec in this state for so long. I get it Frost and Fire are way more popular, but it still doesn’t excuse this design.
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Maybe the issue would be alleviated if we had a talent that put a crystal on the ground which we could DPS having it take a bit more dmg than a normal mob and when reactivating the crystal it would cause it to die.
This way we could explode our TotM at our own convenience which would require the mobs to not be moved away from the crystal but that would be manageable imo.
I don’t think they’re bringing Prismatic Crystal back. Besides, I think that’s what they tried to make touch of the magi… but weaker.
I hope they don’t because I hated [Prismatic Crystal] back in WoD. It was strong, but I really disliked the gameplay.
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I’m not saying it does excuse it. Just a possibility as to why they may have. On my mage I love arcane and I hate playing it now. I’d like it buffed also but won’t happen until 10.0 if at all.
Arcane was cool to play in Wrath, Cata, MoP and Legion. Rest iterations suck.
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How about making it so we can decide when TotM explodes in case we want to explode it earlier?
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Arcane is unplayable. It has a terrible, clunky play style with legendaries and covenant abilities making it very rough and difficult to play without any significant strength. It’s extremely unfortunate because I’d like to be able to play arcane and have it be enjoyable. However, fire and frost are much more versatile and have a fun play style. It’s poor that arcane does not even pull off enough single-target damage to support the weak AOE presence .
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Arcane can pull off good single target damage. However, as you’ve said, atm there’s really no point in using arcane when frost and fire covers everything between consistent and or burst st or mt better and more reliably than arcane. It’s not bad (except in pvp), but there’s just more fun and valuable options in fire and frost. Especially with frost at this point where the options available just makes it so much more fun to play around with. Although, I’m still not 100% used to cf, it’s still there as a wip… for next week. I’m not touching explosive dungeons.
Back to arcane. It is powerful in its own right it’s single target is still powerful and its mt as well, but many things could interupt that attempt to pull it off in both raid and dungeons that will make it almost impossible to recover from that. Just having arcane power and rune of power active won’t even make a difference since you might as well just use a cancel aura macro for them since you’re really not doing anything there.
Note, for those bothering to read this, I’m not advocating to use cancelaura macros and to do that, but just saying that one hiccup with touch and that’s all of your burst right there and all of your single target and multitarget damage that matters comes from that one spell.
Every time I come across these threads, it reminds me how data illiterate we are as a species.
Mind clarifying for the class?