That was back in my orange parse days. Of course I was also in my 30’s then 
I still miss prismatic crystal even though I know I’m in the vast minority there.
Sometimes. The issue right now is missile procs being as low as they are doesn’t guarantee you getting one during your TotM phase. Usually does but not always which is terribly bad design.
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Yeah, I try to always hold one charge if I know TotM is about to go off cooldown. But it’s just one more thing to keep track of and it’s annoying. I really don’t understand why they had to design it that way. They could have just had it explode on its own after a set period or at least made it so that it explodes after x3 ABs or AEs so that it isn’t needlessly convoluted and smoother to execute in both ST and AoE situations.
Same here. I’m just a casual player and I liked Arcane before. Now I’ve died so many times fighting it’s no longer fun.
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Came back to WoW this past Tuesday after one year break.
Personally, I now find Arcane way more mobile and fun. More importantly do not feel the pressure to get that perfect execution in the burst windows. It feels way more random now.
That being said, I am still gearing up (only been 3 days), and doing easy content.
Maybe its just the honeymoon period of coming back, but I remember last year Arcane used to cause me PTSD.
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You’re in the weird spot of having left when the spec was in shambles but have also been gone long enough to miss the rework that made it better and are now returning to something that is somewhere in between. They tried to move away from the rigid and punishing rotation we had before but the alternative they settled on is half-baked and still leaves a lot of the most annoying aspects of the spec in place. Also the Clearcasting proc rate is abysmal and this was flagged for them during the Beta but they didn’t buff it nearly enough.
As I looked at Arcane it’s still as bad as it was back in DF… just in different aspect.
Sure you don’t need that overcomplicated rotation anymore, but now you need a gazillion weakauras just to track your procs, and use spells according to your procs. Your rotation is also pretty bad during burst, as it is now kinda random, depending on your procs… though if you manage to pull it you will do some really nice numbers not going to lie. I really hope we will not replay S1 Dragonflight 1st month where we will be forced to play Arcane, cause the other two specs are ridiculously undertuned and needs like 5-6 consecutive buffs just to become playable.
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lmao what? I absolutely love new arcane spec. They did not ruin it for me at all.
Git gud.
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Id say the spec is easier to not make mistakes which is what they wanted, if you mess up your rotation its not the end of the world
Reminds me of shadow priests. I hope arcane isn’t in for that roller coaster ride.
I got the exact opposite reaction. I only play my mage casually and only can play frost mage . I can never play fire mage since one wrong move and your damage tanks and arcane seems very very complicated with too many different options to go about . Now I love arcane is pretty much a stric priority easy to remember abilities to use.
I also play other class and I really like a strict rotation pority or what to use when x happens. Guess I am the few odd ball out there
God, I hope not! 
This is my biggest ERK, so much of the spec is trapped behind getting clearcasting procs, and if they don’t, it sucks bad.
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Blizzard ruined the way I play Arcane mage. Arcane Missiles now requires clearcasting which means I can no longer use it as my go to spell.
Should be safe to note that good chance the reworked specs were made to work best once you have the hero talents up and running
Wasn’t that one of the biggest complaints for Arcane during both BFA and SL as well? I mean, aside from the 450867 cooldowns you had to stack… Seems they’ve learned nothing.
The real kicker is that looking back at some old videos of BrF and HfC, there are clearcasting missiles procs for days. I still maintain that whether you’re salty about the lack of content, WoD was peak Arcane gameplay.
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BfA was just one big complaint. I’m pretty sure I did the math in BfA and realized that missiles were always a dps loss compared to just doing a 4 charged blast. But in SL, yes. Or at least that’s what I remember seeing the most of.
I’ll be honest, they introduced (and improved) a concept that helped us feel a bit better about procs without actually needing to adjust the proc rate much: Nether Precision. It effectively makes your CC proc last for the duration of your missiles and 2 blasts.
The problem is that they haven’t been able to balance it out correctly. The weak bonus in SL made it not worth taking. The overpowered bonus in DF made us clip our missiles. Now in TWW it’ll be a required talent for Spellslinger, regardless of its power. And the overall balance between base kit and hero talents seems to make our 30 spec talents feel relatively insignificant by comparison.
They were on to something decent, but instead of iterating on what they had, they did what they always do to us: start over with completely new concepts that nobody asked for.
I don’t personally understand people saying Arcane was difficult. I am absolutely the worst WoW player ever. I loved playing Arcane. It was absolutely my favorite. Now I can’t play it. Locking Arcane Missile behind Clear Casting was a poor decision imo. I switched to fire and now it takes way to long to defeat mobs. Then tried frost and it’s a little better than fire but neither are as good as arcane imo. I hope that they change it back but i don’t see that happening.
Not only that but it also makes them feel obsolete and redundant, especially considering their ridiculous pathing and the passive nature of most nodes. In contrast the hero trees have none of those short comings.
Yup, the never ending cycle of “borrowed powers” continues. They just slapped a new name on them. It’s supremely ironic that went with the “evergreen” moniker which is all but a guarantee that this system will continue to carry over into the future.
I get their desire to give us something new and shiny with every expansion but when you’ve got 20 years worth of “shiny” it becomes an unmanageable mess, which is what we have now. Frankly, I think the shift from talent tiers to trees exacerbated those issues and only served to highlight the decades of bandaids and half-measures heaped onto every spec by brining them all out in the open for everyone to see and struggle with in the tree interface. It was much better when all of that was under the hood with the tier model, imo.
Yeah those arcane changes that just came out aren’t live. So your fun that you were having is what we were all having. You won’t be having fun with arcane and nice those nether precision changes go live