I know arcane needed a change, and unfortunately i knew this is what would happen when blizzard heard people saying it was too difficult. Imo arcane wasnt as difficult as people made it out to be, i think people would go look up the rotation and see all the steps and immediately dismiss it. It took me about an hour at training dummies to get my bars set up and to get a good grasp of the rotation. Arcane felt very fun and unique in terms of gameplay.
Im not trying to sound like an elitist and say it was only fun because it was hard, because it wasnt. I liked the mana management and manipulation aspect of the spec.
But now all thats gone and its boiled down to a generic âhit all your cool downs, build a resource then spend it, and occasionally a shiny button will pop up and you hit itâ
I will say that one of the positives of the change is that its now more mobile because you arent mostly casting arcane blast, but if i wanted more mobility id play fire mage. It used to be if i wanted to build a resource and spend it with the occasional shiny button id play frost. And if i wanted to do more resource management but static rotation id play arcane.
Im sure its gonna find its niche, but i think its become to generic and they shouldve kept with mana usage being the main thing for arcane.
Arcane was never difficult, it was just annoying and the rotation needlessly cumbersome. The rework tried to make it less so and the rotation is admittedly more streamlined now but most of the long time annoyances are still present and the spec tree has been completely screwed up as a result of this tinkering for no apparent reason.
The top piece of feedback ever since the talent tree revamp was that there were too many clunky or otherwise completely passive talent nodes that could have simply been baked into spells. So what do they do? They removed most of them only to replace them with more of the same!
Has the spec been âruined?â No, but neither has it been oversimplified as you seem to allude. In other words, Blizzard has once again managed to find a happy medium where no one is happy with the state of things. The spec changed just enough to upset those who liked the way it was before but the changes did not go as far as those who advocated for a complete overhaul wanted.
I agree with you 100%. Whenever we get s big patch like this ill go through and do my own build originally and then cross reference with wowhead/icyveins to see the talents they recommend and why (it usually helps me learn the spec at a more deeper level imo). I basically had the same talent choices in all of the arcane tree, it feels more of an illusion of choice.
The only reason i say they ruined the spec (its a bit dramatic i know) is because it feels like they took out a core mechanic of the spec identity and didnt really replace it with anything. Its like if they were to remove soul shards from destro lock and replace it with chaos bolt being a on proc ability
I ran a few dungeons today, tweaked talents between each one, so far I like it.
I felt like clearcasting procs were super rare, which made most of the talents I poured into the left side of the tree wasted. Anything connected to missiles (which can only be fired when CC procs), just didnât get enough play because CC was so rare for me. So I moved all my talents into mid and right side of the tree and dmg is better. Arcane explosion and orb barrage seems to be the new jam (or still the new jam). I like being able to use Super Nova as an interrupt again, still working on my timing.
This, 100%! Itâs all illusory. When you really think about it talent trees are really not all that different from talent tiers because youâre still largely locked into the same few choices with everything else as just window dressing that was previously baseline.
You canât diversify any build beyond just a handful of ST vs AoE talent nodes. And itâs even worse with the upcoming hero talents where you literally have no choice.
Theyâre just so terrified of balancing issues that they simply refuse to let us get off the rails and force us into the same cookie-cutter builds.
Arcane was easier before these changes lol. It was cyclical. You had a set rotation that never changed and you could plan a fight around it.
Now there are so many procs, nether precession needs blast blast barrage, Enlightenment tracking, Arcane tempo tracking, touch of the magi requires 3 different spells to detonate with spark.
I really like fire but i absolutely hate BoTSK, it just feels so against what fire mage is. Youâre sitting there like a magic fire machine gun and then you have to stop everything and hardcast pyroblast or flamestrike for what feels like ages
They fully expect us to treat all of these procs completely passively and I expect most players will do just that. However, youâre correct in pointing out that anyone who actively tries to track all of them is in for a harder time than before. Moral of the story, donât try to min/max or optimize your build in this game.
P.S. Detonating the new Spark in ST becomes trivial if you just remember to Barrage right before your use TotM. That way you will just need to hit the target with AB and AM which will happen naturally. In AoE though itâs gonna be annoying af and you might be better off taking the passive node.
Iâll admit I am by far not a mega great wow player, i wouldnât even consider myself a good wow player. I play the game to have fun and relax and usually just grind away doing quests or achievement hunting. I just like my peace, and usually just play alone lol. But this new patch or whatever has sucked all the joy and fun out of the character I just spent weeks grinding. Iâve died more times just today than I have since I made her. Arcane missiles doesnât proc enough imo, and the whole class now feels squishier than a priest. Iâm in Kun-lai and Iâve died to a same level npc 5 times, by the time I get 4 spells off, Iâm half dead. Iâve been having a lot of fun playing this character, but I just cant bring myself to play her anymore which made the last few weeks pointless and a waste of time.
Again, take my opinion as you will, Iâm far far far from an expert or a pro.
I hate some of you dislike the changes, but I have had such a diff experience tonight.
Iâm having an ARCANE blast (sorry couldnât resist) playing. I personally loathed the extreme script,I enjoy reacting and adapting to procs. I get that frost and fire offer solutions to that desire but the visual and spells for arc orb barrages , missiles and stuff I have been really enjoying it.
The last 3 expansions have felt like Blizzard got halfway through making Arcane a good spec and just stopped, leaving some good ideas on the table and holding on to bad ones that shouldâve been pruned in beta testing. Itâs often felt like something was missing or that too many relics followed us along. Now it feels like theyâre trying to unload the second half of those 3 expansions all at once.
To me, it feels like theyâre trying to introduce too many new concepts and talents all at once - and thatâs just looking at the Arcane tree and not counting the Hero trees that go with them.
As mentioned, Arcane has never been hard to play, but it has been tricky to master. Legion / Wod arcane (which I think most long-time arcane mages feel is around when the spec felt its best) were very reactive, but in an abstract way. So people often played the spec like it was a finely laid-out script. More recently, when CD tracking overtook mana management, the spec truly did become a strict script. The difficulty shifted from knowing when to react and how to âCan I afford to wait 5 extra seconds or do I need to do my script now?â
The lack of reactivity for the past few expansions has created a difficulty through memory, through luck, and through rigidity. One wrong move and it was over. The spec itself was not hard, but you needed to keep to a strict set of rules to do well. Blizzard has stated that they didnât like this idea (which I agree with). Difficulty through memorization isnât difficulty. So they wanted us to be more reactive. But maybe now they went just a little too hard in that department⊠And it leaves the whole thing looking a bit messy. Almost as if they, once again, got halfway through a decent update and just stopped caring.
I agree, and getting used to the new procs and prios is definitely going to take some time. Personally, I loved the strict cyclical rotation with just enough clearcasting/orb procs to add some spontaneity. To me, doing well on an aoe pull on arcane felt the most rewarding in the game. I thought I wouldnât miss the dots but idk just feels a bit empty now.
Removing Chrono Shift was definitely a bad move but if we get real for a second, they made such a mess of the Arcane spec tree with all the shuffling around of old talent nodes and the addition of new ones, that there is no way we would have been able to take Chrono Shift even if it was not pruned.
We told them to remove extraneous talent nodes so that we could pick utility nodes like Chrono Shift but instead they removed all the utility nodes and replaced them with even more extraneous ones. Idk what to say anymore, I am exasperated.
The lower proc rate on clearcasting and the removal of Chrono Shift make me more determined than ever to play Frost (though I will also be playing Balance Druid and Elemental Shaman).
Mmm. WoD was pretty much peak gameplay for a lot of classes/specs. Say what you want about the âcontentâ, but both Arcane and Fire were amazing during BrF, and all 3 specs felt great in HFC. AM for days, and a semi-fixed rotation to stay above 90% mana. It might not have had the 48275 buttons to push in a specific sequence that the twitch streamers and ultra-sweaties want, but for the 99.9% of players who just want to have fun it was amazing.
