I’m guilty of it as much as the next guy; posting only ways to “fix” or improve arcane, from talents to proc rates, to defensives, to tier sets, to…everything else. BUT I continue to play arcane (and exclusively so), for some fun reasons.
There is a lot Arcane gets right and makes it fun to play. So running counter to most of our threads in the mage forums, I’d like to get arcane player’s thoughts on what arcane is doing well. In hopes Devs will say “oh, good, glad you like that…here’s some more.”
Arcane Orb: It’s a great spell! It offers one of the few uncapped AOE choices in the whole game! Orb Barrage as a capstone is brilliant. Few things compare to slinging orb barrage procs back to back 7 times in a row and melting a pack of 12 Mythic Dungeon mobs at once. The long range is fun to play and position against. I never have to be like “this might not hit” because it rolls a mile and half across the screen and I love it!
Missile Battery (4-piece Tier Bonus): Easily one of the best visually “fun” things we have in the tool box and it drops lots of damage (especially if your on surge and ToM), just very fun thing to proc and use. I don’t know what other players on the team see, but from where I stand this is a “yesssss!” type cast when all lines up and hits all the numbers of fun gameplay. More of this please!
Arcane Surge: Central to the playstyle and grants me a significant boost in damage and allows me to feel the “just wait a second, it’s coming…and…BAM!!!” On long boss battles the second surge arrives in anticipation and you watch your place on the DPS meter go from mid to top over the course of 20 seconds, very fun to run the numbers up in a semi-short window.
Mass Barrier/Invisibility and/or Arcane Intellect: Bringing utility to the greater team is enjoyable game play, I love to get an invite because the raid “needs that int boost”, love to throw out some lifesaving barriers in a clutch boss fight, or sneak the whole team across terrain for 12 seconds, it’s fun to be useful outside our own DPS.
Blink/Shimmer: while not exclusively an arcane thing, and on the PVP side more applicable, but being able to travel and evade and drive people nuts playing “where’d he go?” is a very fun playstyle. I can’t think of any other class that can pop around so much and when we hear people complain about mages having “a million” blinks, we all smile and nod, “yes, yes we do.”
Portals: (Also not exclusive to arcane, but wanted to mention it.) I have no idea how other players get around the world, zero, makes no sense. Portals and immediate travel to almost anywhere keeps me coming back to mage.
To answer the question of “why arcane?” “Should I main Arcane?” etc. I only say “yes, arcane is FUN!” It has issues (as all classes will) and you can read any number of other threads on various topics, but at the end of the day, arcane is fun to play, and if there’s any Devs working on arcane, I say “keep adding fun! Tweak the rest of it, of course, but don’t stop adding fun and visually exciting game play to the spec.”
To my other Arcane-o-phyls, what DO YOU like, that I may have missed?
Gearing as arcane is easy. On a fresh expansion or season, its easy to get up and running for arcane, even pvp gear works to start with vs frost/fire that are a little more particular about its stats impacting the playstyle.
I like instant spells like Arcane explosion and Arcane Barrage.
This seems cool in theory but I can’t imagine a scenario where having access to this is ever worth taking for a whole dungeon over a mass barrier providing ~10k HPS for the dungeon and preventing possible one shots. It would be nice if mass invis was elsewhere on the talent tree so it could be actually used on occasion. Maybe there are meta dungeon routes that have mass invis as part of the strat but I’ve never seen a mage use it or be asked to spec into on my mage so I doubt it.
I feel like Mass Invis is an idea that someone had in BfA that didn’t make it live until DF.
In BfA (moreso than other expansions, if I recall) there was a pretty big meta around bringing a rogue for skips in M+. So much so that Blizzard added in a skip mechanic as part of one of the seasonal affixes to try to make rogues less required.
Had we had mass invis back then, it would have been a much more desirable choice. However, it seems that blizzard recognized the issue with making one specific skill too “required for content” and started designing dungeons better. Even if we do need a skip, we’ve got potions for that now. All Mass invis does at this point is 1) save the group a potion or 2) allow the group to get closer to a boss before pulling.
I love a lot about arcane, almost everything. what I want to do however is spend more time doing damage and no item setting up my damage. Im ok with procs but I also dont like standing in melee range to build charges for a blast. I think the AOE needs redesigned. I don’t find the current AOE enjoyable. Also a fan of a single resource to manage. If its orbs let it be orbs, if its mana let it be mana. No other class needs to worry about mana. The current way the class is designed is that in order to max dps we have to do all this crazy stuff. I feel like the spec needs to be more accessible to lower skill levels. It is just the nuances that drive me crazy. Cutting missiles short unless it procs the set bonus, evocating at full mana, sporatic orb procs, 20 different modifiers before doing dmg. big burns and mini burns. Just give us spell priorities with procs. Simple yet engaging.
I say all this because I actually love the class. I play it a lot, but I am blown away by how much easier and intuitive the other classes are compared to arcane. Hell I even need to have a modifier for my castable spells due to interupts being catastrophic to dps. Volcanic is utter torture for me.
It doesn’t really seem like it. Arcane has been the more “complex” mage spec for some time now, even when the dps didn’t reflect it. It’s unlikely to change because Blizzard generally forgets mage has three specs and I’m not entirely sure anyone who works there actually plays it.
Each of your posts seems like you want arcane to be a 3 button spec which isn’t happening. I can understand being annoyed like many of us are that the complexity isn’t rewarded with numbers, but honestly you sound like someone who should be playing BM hunter.
It’s a good idea that gives at least one more class other than Rogue the ability to do specific skips. I am always for having at least 2 classes able to do a thing, instead of just 1.
That said, I don’t mind my Int buff helping secure my raid spot. xD
I like the old way of playing arcane TBH. Casting 4 Arcane blasts, into a barrage, using arcane explosion for AOE and getting arcane power boost. The way it is now( how many buttons can we fit into a single cd) is not fun. You go to the mage cord and they give you macros to help you do it. That’s awful. If you need macros will a spell sequence to play a spec, you should prob change the spec.
You don’t. The arcane theorycrafter just really likes macros. And arcane is unique in that its burst rotation never changes (in ST at least) so you can actually castsequence. The capability to do that actually shows a spec thats easier to play than most, since it lacks variance.
It may be the same, but there’s a lot of buttons that get shoved into that small burst window. Fire is all about resource management. Chaining together spells to get pyros out and be in combust as much as possible. if feels more flow. Frost is icicle counting and getting as many GS as possible. To me those are more engaging and fun, Arcane feels like it’s all of fire and frost buttons together in a 10 sec window. Maybe it’s just me but trying to shove a bunch of buttons in burst and mini burst windows isn’t fun. What feels worst is most raid leaders want every mage to be arcane only and playing other specs= bench. Again, maybe it’s just my personal scars with arcane.
However, the problem with arcane is less the amount of buttons and cds (though I 100% think the spec is bloated and needs to be simplified) and more that if you are interrupted in anyway, your damage tanks and you’re done on that fight.
I do understand the feeling of arcane having too many buttons required during its burst window that arent pressed at other times. I’m pro them condensing that, but arcane would need an additional mechanic added to them to compensate. As is its a very simple spec where the ideal rotation is just rotating between 2 arcane blasts and a clearcast missiles.
The spells we press during our cds are:
Evocate
Radiant Spark
Nether Tempest
Arcane Surge
Mana Gem
Arcane Barrage
Touch of the Magi
Arcane Blast
The vibe I get a lot on the forums is that people dislike evocating before your big burn, even though its next use coincides with when you are out of mana, and its only a 3s channel which is easily done pre-pull anywhere. But, siphon storm is oppressively strong so I wouldn’t be against it being removed which removes evocate from being necessary here.
Radiant spark functionally is a part of touch of the magi, so they could just bake the effect in to be applied with touch of the magi.
Nether tempest has some uses outside of this section of the rotation, but it can either be reworked or removed as well.
That leaves us with:
Arcane Surge
Arcane Barrage
Touch of the Magi
Arcane Blast
Mana Gem
And a burst rotation that is Arcane Surge → Arcane Barrage → Touch of the Magi → 3x Arcane Blast → Filler Rotation. A bit simple, but if you remove everything we listed above, there should be room for some more intuitive depth in the replaced talents. This is pretty unlikely though given we had our shot at a rework.
I’m pretty sure mana gem goes in there, and I think 1 arcane orb as well. Evo-orb-spark-tempest-Surge-mana gem-barrage-Touch-Blast. That could be an older roation that I’m recalling, but that doesn’t even add in trinkets.
And you don’t think this list is excessive? Other specs legit have like 2-4 buttons and churn out much more DPS with not even an ounce of the skill required to pull anything similar with Arcane. Once again, I fully understand that there are people who genuinely enjoy that added challenge but I am definitely not one of them and to be perfectly honest I just don’t get the mindset of liking complexity for its own sake, especially when you aren’t rewarded for it. I suspect most people would agree.
Yeah because it’s tedious. It’s basically the Azshara trinket from BfA.
No spell is “too big to fail” and that includes Siphon Storm. Yes it’s very strong but its removal is nothing that can’t be balanced with a simple damage aura numbers tuning. The removal of RoP proved that point beyond any dispute.
Completely agree. That entire line of talent nodes should be redesigned and ideally completely replaced with something more interesting. I’ve said many times before that I would love a NT that actually looks like a proper tempest, maybe as a medium length AoE cooldown.
I was just telling a friend the other day that this is one of the main reasons I like my mage, because I can just go anywhere from anywhere, as opposed to having to go to a home city and going through portals. So same here!
I also really like the gameplay structure of Arcane. Once you get it, it’s very straightforward and easy to understand. It doesn’t make my brain hurt and it makes it easier to improve your gameplay. The priority list that tells you what to press based on what lights up or some sort of “if/then” scenario feel more challenging to play optimally because they can be different every time, but not Arcane!
It definitely has some buttons that dont really matter if they were there or not. But other classes have less buttons because they have more complexity in them. Arcane affords this level because it has no variation in the gameplay, which makes it very easy to tell when you messed up, and how to correct it.