Nobody knows how to read WarcraftLogs. It unfortunately happens everywhere, and I’m guilty of falling for traps without researching. The patronization is unwarranted though.
Some food for thought…
Well, the way things look Arcanr mage isn’t loosing it crappy mana system in 10.0. I was really hoping they were going to rework classes, but instead they are doing trees. Don’t get me wrong, I’m super happy for it, but I would have liked to see reworked classes as well.
I’m right there with you guys. I was a Venthyr Arcane mage and was doing resonable damage but felt I could do better so I replaced my legendary and covenant to Kyrian. Between renonwing up to 80, spending about 50K on my legendary, and completely relearning my rotation I put a ton of time and money in. Then I get into a raid and I find out that being able to stand for roughly six seconds in order to cast the requisite spells needed to buff Arcane Barrage to make those juicy 300K crits was almost never viable. It seemed like every single dang time I would start the rotation I would cast about half of it and then something would go under my feet, or I had to switch targets, both nullifying the rotation. It was so demoralizing that I have largely quit the game, but haven’t quit completely because I don’t want my guild to feel like I’m abandoning them. On paper Kyrian Arcane Mage is incredible, Crits so high you can pull the boss, but the ability to reliably complete the entire cast every time requires expert level planning.
Funny, I was so bummed about this whole thing that I googled to see if others are having similar problems, feels a little better I’m not the only one.
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Can’t speak for PvP, but for PvE, Kyrian Arcane has been great for me. It’s a high risk high reward spec that has strong ST burst and nearly unmatched 3-5 target burst. It’s damage profile is extremely versatile for priority damage, cleave, or big AoE. Yeah it sucks when your ramp gets interrupted, but there are ways to avoid losing out completely and once you learn fight timers, this is pretty rare anyway.
Because of our damage profile, I would argue that Arcane is in the best position to bring higher overall damage to higher PUG keys than the other mage specs…frost needs big pulls that don’t get moved, and fire needs pulls to be coordinated around combustion to excel. Arcane can keep pumping no matter how hectic the pulls get if you know what you are doing. That said, in a highly coordinated group a frost mage will definitely be higher damage, but let’s be honest, how often do you get that in PUGs? Almost never.
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I love arcane mage - but that doesn’t mean it’s in a good place. A few things that would help it immediately:
-Make it so you can press totm a second time to explode whenever you want (instant cast OFF the GCD). Too many times totm doesn’t work because a mob dies before it goes off and we invest too much time casting it for it to do nothing.
-
baseline arcane missiles being castable while moving with clear casting
-
New ability Wall of Arcane Power - allows mage to put up a wall of arcane power that either reduces damage of any projectiles / frontals that go through it OR slows the speed of enemy missile type attacks by 75% so you could place it and it allowed raid members to dodge slowed down projectiles that travel through it
-
Arcane orb baseline
Those changes would make a huge difference in the right direction for arcane.
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Bring back Legion arcane.
Sure our cleave was terrible but out ST and AoE were amazing.
Missiles felt GOOD … build up the three charges, drop a RoP, dump missles and feel good.
The change to missiles is what ruined Arcane for me. I tried the Kyrian build last tier … not a fan.
Hey, nobody said they won’t rework specs just because they’re already revamping the trees. If anything, the revamped trees is a good reason for some specs to get a nice rework, even if not a complete one, like Frost Mage 100% deserves an [Icy Veins] rework, but not necessarily the entire spec.
One of the leaks that hinted at Evoker even mentioned that the spec it was taking its name from ([Evocation] from Arcane) might receive a complete rework due to the way the new class would work. I just hope they’re not entirely taking the time magic fantasy away from us, but I do hope they do away with mana completely.
I want to think that’s possible, but blizz’s track record completely tells me different. They limit the time and money they spend on the classes, and with the talent trees coming in along with a new class, albeit a 2/3rds full class, I doubt they rework things. I think the most they do is work on the spells that are on the talent trees, but they will most likely be modified to fit the cds and class systems already in place.
At the end of the day, do you even trust them to do a full mage revamp?
They revamped Arcane for BfA without any explanation and look what we got.
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No, I do not trust them.
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I think you get after the heart of the issue when you say:
“Arcane has suffered from a major problem for a very long time. It’s a high risk playstyle that doesn’t often retain the high reward expected from from taking risks.”
I don’t mind being at risk of being 1-shot by lots of things, if that means I’ve got crazy output or utility to offer the team.
But if I can be 1-shot and bring only mediocre results to the party, what was the point?
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Tbh I wish there was just a more user friendly spec for m+ outside of high key fortified the dmg profile doesn’t line up very well…. There has to be a better way
…. Well without gimping my boss dps
They have no time to design classes and specs properly because all their budgeted design team hours goes to borrowed power systems.
Can’t be distracted with designing the classes properly when you have people who used to design slot machines and casino games making systems to boost “engagement metrics” and “borrowed power.”
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This has been a longstanding (and IMO valid) criticism right up until the expansion announcement.
Thankfully as of the beginning of the development of Dragonflight, this appears to no longer be the case.
Unfortunately, it does leave us with the remaining time in Shadowlands with what we hope are the last of the borrowed power systems.
To be fair to Blizzard, this little buff that Arcane received is at least an attempt to tweak the numbers and is better than nothing.
That’s not to say I don’t have my criticisms of how Arcane plays (particularly with the Kyrian Harmony build). It’s a rigid, fragile, glass cannon spec that unless perfectly executed over the course of combat (regardless of mechanics), your numbers will greatly suffer to the point of folks asking if you even know what you’re doing. (“Why are you just spamming Arcane Missiles?” You know what I’m talking about, fellow Harmony mages. 
)
If you’re lucky, your raidmates will eventually come to understand that if you can just stand still for a few seconds on every cooldown, yeah, big numbers. Otherwise, nope, dumpster numbers.
Personally, my feelings are mixed about the Harmony effect and whether or not I want to see it continued past Shadowlands. On one hand, it’s really cool pulling off an absolutely massive ABarr crit, followed by an equally impressive Touch of the Magi hit. So far as I know, we have one if the the highest single shot potential damage bursts in the game right now with this build. So that’s pretty cool if you can set it up and execute it consistently.
On the other hand, as mentioned, it’s incredibly inflexible to the point of being impractical in most combat situations most of the time. We’ve all been there. The start of combat is great, and you’re rocking the meters. Then as combat continues and things get hectic, it all falls apart over time as we contend with mechanics and cooldowns not quite lining-up.
With this in mind, I do kind of pine for “traditional” Arcane and burn/conserve phases again (AB spam on burn, followed by AB, ABarr, and AM on proc). It wasn’t quite as exciting as building-up a mega-crit ABarr, but it was a bit more stable and reliable. The problem is that recently traditional Arcane has simply become non-competitive in numbers. An Arcane mage spamming AB simply doesn’t have the output compared to other specs, which is contrary to the original design of the burn/conserve cycle. This is going to need fixed going forward unless they intend to lean-in to a permanent Harmony-style rotation for Arcane.
So, in short, I don’t have the answer for how to best fix Arcane. There are a couple of different paths they could take. A complete redesign might be interesting, but perhaps a bit too aggressive considering all the work involved with converting every spec in the game to the new talent systems. Keeping traditional burn/conserve Arcane can work, but they’d need to substantially tweak the burn numbers to compete. Finally, doing a Harmony-style might also work, but I’d like to see some tweaks given to improve mobility/flexibility if that’s the case. Being a mega-nuke cannon must come at a cost, but I could stand for it being a little less punishing, personally. I think buffing our filler damage (AB and AM) is as step in this direction.
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They design mechanics totally independent and without thought to classes, specs, or class balance. This is why we can never have a 100% class balanced game. Some mechanics just break some classes while other classes flourish… My 2 copper.
I actually think the new talent/skill system would be the perfect time for them to completely rework Arcane (and Frost for that matter). Arcane has had almost no major changes for a very, very long time (at least as far back as Cata) other than a few little additions from new talents. It’s in desperate need of an update, but how they go about that is entirely dependent on the design team.
They could remove mana as a resource like they have for all other casters and focus on building the rotation to something that isn’t 2 spells and a burn/conserve. They could double-down on mana but give it some actual meaning other than for CC procs, and make management more important. They could even develop some sort of other build/spend resource which I know a lot of people are against but could work if done right.
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Personally I just think that’s bad management. Having multiple end-game options, but not designing them with classes in mind (or desinging classes with these in mind) ends up breaking things as we have seen. Having specs that are super-strong for AoE ends up with massive disparity in M+, and likewise classes that dominate ST or split cleave does the same for raid to a lesser extent (eg: it generally only matters for the final few bosses). I don’t know what the solution might be, short of having separate coefficients/gear for M+ and Raid.
Oh absolutely, but I don’t think anyone is expecting 100% balance. 90% would be nice though, with the gap between certain specs lessened across the board. Hopefully having fewer borrowed power systems will make it easier to balance due to not having multiple systems piggy-backing off each other.
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For sure, 100% class balance would be a little boring right?
Arcane Mage is one of my favorite specs in the game. The issue right now is that it’s unplayable except at very high keys or with very low other DPS. The slightest movement, the add with ToTM dying, or anything that stops your rotation kills all DPS. Also, Kyrian is the only viable covenant. And that’s what actually makes the rotation almost impossible. I hate Radiant Spark as is, and I don’t like the legendary.
The other Major issue is that the legendaries for Arcane are the most lackluster of any spec. There is only one viable option. And only two that really deal with increasing the damage of the rotation. Between very poor choices for legendaries and the 4-piece not actually being helpful, Arcane mage is getting left behind on my toons.
What I would like to see. Change a couple legendaries to work better with Arcanes rotation. For example, you can have Arcane Explosion double hit when it hits three or more. Or you can have a legendary that auto procs missiles when you get cast barrage at 4 stacks.
All I know is that when I play mage I don’t want to play the hardest rotation in the game. I want to enjoy it. And I’m so stressed about having to move slightly that I mess the rotation up and instead of hitting a group for 40k, I’m doing 4k. Too punishing.
I don’t think it would be boring, but it’s just not possible with so many factors and 2 different types of PvE end-game content. DF might be able to balance a little better though if they follow through with their ‘no systems’ approach.
Personally for me, having near 100% balance (maybe with little niches here and there like Arcane ST, Frost cleave, Fire AoE etc) would mean players could pick their spec based on their preferences and what they want to play. Raid/dungeon groups would take players based on skill, not class.