Hello all! This is a thread for feedback and suggestions about changes to Arcane Mages in The War Within including already implemented. It will also have a link to an old (a bit outdated) thread to keep its feedback accessible and relevant.
Post will be split into PVE and PVP subsections for better readability. Here is also a link to latest Arcane tree for people who did not see it: https://www.wowhead.com/beta/talent-calc/mage/arcane/spellslinger
PVE feedback and suggestions
- Making Arcane Missiles usable only during Clearcasting procs has its pros and cons, but removal of many additional or even guaranteed Clearcasting stack generators like Cascading Power is not very good, since it makes both CC procs and Aether Attunement extremely RNG reliant. Sunfury and Spellslinger talents help a bit, but Sunfury provides guaranteed procs after major CD and Spellslinger provides just another RNG source of procs, so it could be better if there were more ways of getting guaranteed procs.
Suggestion: Create an optional talent that would provide X additional stacks of Clearcasting when Arcane Surge is used (in a similar manner to Spontaneous Combustion). Such talent would provide access to on-demand burst window and help better utilize both Spellfire Spheres of Sunfury and Arcane Splinters of Spellslinger. If you want to keep rate of Clearcasting on current level, this talent could become a choice node with other Clearcasting proc frequency boosting talent, for example Illuminated Thoughts. - Improved Prismatic Barrier baseline is a nice change, but it is still not enough to justify Arcane having 1 less major defensive than other 2 specs in PVE, especially since Fire is already preferred over Arcane. That could be addressed.
Suggestion: Make Temporal Shield PVP talent baseline for Arcane Mages. That would give them their own analogue of Cauterize and Cold Snap in PVE and would not affect their survivability much in PVP. - Making both Crackling Energy and Improved Arcane Missiles required to progress down the tree can be negative, since it would pretty much become a 2-4 point tax to take other talents, even if they were reduced to 1 point investment each. Consider just removing them and incorporating their damage boost into baseline damage of affected abilities and moving other / creating new talents in their place (some examples later).
- New Concentration has an issue - making cast of spell free removes its chance to proc Clearcasting and can have negative impact on output. Consider making it just refund mana cost of affected spell, so that its Clearcasting rate is not changed. Since Concentration is a 3rd part of tree talent, it could get an additional boost, for example also make affected Arcane Blast instant.
- After the first iteration of latest rework, Arcane has even less spare points to take any utility (which is opposite to Arcane goals stated during 10.1.5 rework), especially since the mentioned utility now leads to dead end and does not progress down the tree. Accordingly, some talents should be merged to free talent points for utility. Even then most people would prefer to take throughput over utility in most cases. There is a solution to that via making people pick some of utility options without them competing with throughput and potentially with some choices.
Suggestions:
- Merge some talents in tree like Arcing Cleave and Mana Adept into 1 or Improved Clearcasting into baseline effect to free some talent points.
- Put utility nodes as options / choices in 4th row instead of current Crackling Energy and Improved Arcane Missiles (which could be merged into baseline damage of affected abilities). Here are some example utility options in 4th row to progress down the tree:
Left choice node between Distant Explosion and Arcane Singularity:
Distant Explosion - Arcane Explosion can be cast at an enemy from range, dealing damage to target and other enemies nearby.
Arcane Singularity - active ability that pulls enemies in selected area to its center and slows them by X% for Y seconds.
This choice node located in more AoE focused part of tree could allow to pick additional utility suitable for AoE situations between AoE pull / enemy stacking of Arcane Singularity and QoL / uptime of Distant Explosion.
Right choice node between Chrono Shift and Arcane Debilitation:
Chrono Shift - similar effect to current.
Arcane Debilitation - Arcane Barrage affects target(s) with Arcane Debilitation, reducing their damage by X% for Y seconds.
Such choice node would allow Arcane Mages to pick an additional effect for Arcane Barrage between slow + personal haste (useful against melee and CC susceptible enemies) and small damage reduction debuff (more useful against ranged and CC immune enemies).
- Even after the suggested rework, Arcane still has unaddressed issues with AoE like too limited target cap of Arcane Barrage, necessity to stay in melee range for AoE rotation because of Arcane Explosion’s melee range, very big reliance on RNG of Orb Barrage etc. These could be addressed via tweaks or new talents that could be put instead of talents that were reduced in cost / merged / moved to baseline effect like suggested above.
Suggestions:
- Create a new talent that would make Arcane Explosion castable at a target from range like suggested above. It would allow to address the melee range issue, but would require a separate talent point investment to compensate for this boost. If needed, this talent could also increase damage of Arcane Explosion by X% to make it more competitive.
- Create a new capstone talent that would increase number of additional targets hit per Arcane Charge for Arcane Barrage by 1 and if needed also boost damage of Arcane Barrage by X%, pretty much an analogue of Fire Mage’s Blast Zone. This could be a solution to Arcane Barrage’s limited target cap that would require a talent point investment to compensate for this boost. If needed, you could also cap damage bonus of Resonance to 50% to prevent it from getting too large.
- Add a bit of bad RNG protection to Orb Barrage - after spending X Arcane Charges without getting a proc, next spending of Arcane Charges is guaranteed to trigger an Orb. This would provide a layer of bad RNG protection, but would have little to no effect on average or good RNG proc rate.
- Magi’s Spark is badly compatible with AoE situations, since it requires usage of single-target abilities Arcane Missiles and Arcane Blast to trigger. Consider changing it to just increase damage of next 3 casts of Arcane Blast or Arcane Missiles or Arcane Barrage and trigger explosion after 3rd cast to address that.
- Both Presence of Mind and Wizened Wit have flaws that could be addressed. Presence of Mind’s CD starts when it is entirely consumed instead of when used making it a bit desynchronized from other 45s CD abilities. It also has too limited number of charges (where other classes with similar abilities usually have at least 3 charges like Warrior of Elune) and could use more charges too. As for Wizened Wit - it drops cast time of 4 charge affected Arcane Blast below GCD, making its effect mostly wasted and inferior to mobility provided by Presence of Mind. There is also no option here that is well compatible with AoE situations. Both choice options could be improved.
Suggestions:
- Change Presence of Mind to 30s duration with 45s CD, make it trigger CD when used and consider increasing it to 3 charges.
- Change Wizened Wit into an active ability that would make next Arcane Barrage instantly refund all Arcane Charges spent. This would provide an alternative QoL option for this choice node (resource generation vs mobility) that is also compatible with AoE situations (unlike PoM).
- It is nice to see Season 3 Arcane set in talent tree, but it has similar issue to existing set - after getting the Aether Attunement proc, you need to generate another Clearcasting proc to make use of it. This issue is even larger now since you can’t even use non-Clearcast Arcane Missiles to spend it. A good QoL change could be to make Aether Attunement also immediately activate Clearcasting to address that.
- Time Loop can be decent, but being a dead end talent that does not progress down the tree reduces its viability. To address that, it could get a connection to Arcane Harmony as well, so that it is both a viable pathing option and people who for some reason want to skip Aether Attunement could still get access to Harmony builds.
- Touch of the Magi still has an issue where target enemy can die before it detonates, making part of its effect wasted, especially in Mythic+. To address it and give Arcane Mages a bit more control, consider allowing to detonate ToTM early via pressing its ability input again while it is active in a similar manner to Cloudburst Totem (with possible small delay for activation to prevent double tapping and ending it accidentally). Such QoL change would allow Arcane Mages to utilize ToTM early if needed and still provide a bit of skill expression.
- Leydrinker seems underwhelming - it requires 3 Clearcasting stacks (to get 5 consumptions of Nether Precision to trigger), but compared to Aether Attunement it provides much lower damage boost and much lower number of additional targets affected. It also has a bit of design contradiction - in AoE situations where its cleave matters Nether Precision and Arcane Charges would be spent by Arcane Barrage, meaning that when Leydrinker triggers you would likely have 0 Arcane Charges and need to stack them again to get a juiced cleaving Arcane Blast. All of these issues should be addressed.
Suggestion: Increase damage bonus from Leydrinker, its number of additional targets to 4+ and make it also cause affected Arcane Blast be instant and deal damage as if having 4 Arcane Charges (for better proc feeling and immediate usability). - Like mentioned by other posters, Arcane Harmony is not very compatible with new design of Arcane Missiles, since it requires 2.5 usages of Clearcast Arcane Missiles to stack fully. Having 15 or 16 stacks with 6-7% damage increase each could be better and allow to fully utilize Arcane Harmony after using 2 Clearcasting Arcane Missiles.
PVP feedback and suggestions
- Making Arcane Missiles usable only during Clearcasting could be beneficial for PVE, but is directly harmful for PVP - non-Clearcast Arcane Missiles are actively used there to deal meaningful damage without Arcane Charges (which are frequently spent to trigger Chrono Shift from Arcane Barrage) and using no charged Arcane Blasts in PVP can be detrimental. As such, maybe option to use non-Clearcast Arcane Missiles should be kept in PVP without affecting PVE and there is a solution.
Suggestion: Create a new PVP talent that allows to use Arcane Missiles without Clearcasting and increases their damage by X%. This talent would allow to keep current use cases of Arcane Missiles in PVP without affecting PVE. - Arcane has some PVP nerf modifiers that might no longer be justified in The War Within. Please take a look at Nether Precision (25% nerfed in PVP, might be no longer justified), Presence of Mind (15% nerfed in PVP), Arcane Bombardment (60% nerf in PVP might be too large and reduces viability of Sunfury Execution choice option in Sunfury tree), Arcane Surge (30% nerfed in PVP), Prodigious Savant (25% nerfed in PVP) and other similar modifiers and consider whether they are still needed in The War Within.
- Arcane has several PVP talents that are too niche or undertuned and could use changes and boosts to become more competitive. These include:
Master of Escape - its cooldown reduction does not matter much and Arcane has much more compelling PVP talent options. It could use both a boost and a new use case.
Suggestion: Make it reduce CD of Greater Invisibility by 30 seconds instead of 45 (to align with most 90s CD major offensive CDs), but also remove X damage over time effects from Mage when Greater Invisibility is used like it did in earlier expansions. This change would make it a good tool against damage over time based specs and comps and allow to more often use Greater Invisibility as a true escape option, matching the name and giving it a niche. Since Greater Invisibility is general now, you could also make it a general Mage PVP talent.
Kleptomania - is not used much after the change, since it is both easy to disrupt and blocks regular Spellsteal. First part is fair, since its effect is powerful, but second is not really needed, since getting kicked on Kleptomania is already a punishment enough, as it locks the major Arcane school.
Suggestion: Make it no longer replace regular Spellsteal. That would allow to use it as a niche tool against buff / HoT heavy comps with counterplay measures against it possible and without hindering your regular dispel capabilities, just as Priests don’t lose access to regular Dispel Magic if they take Mass Dispel.
Here is a link to old Arcane feedback thread to preserve feedback from it too - Arcane Mage In War Within: Suggestions Thread
If you want, you can add your own feedback and suggestions about Arcane changes in this thread. Thank you for reading!