At the end of the day, Arcane Missiles reverted to a proc, as opposed to essentially being available to cast but a poor choice to cast without Clearcasting up.
Arcane mage isn’t for everyone. Most people either love it or hate it. I agree that the TWW version doesn’t feel good, but my wife loves it.
Arcane mage is all about the burst, you have burst every 45 seconds and larger bursts every 1.5 minutes. Use slow to kite enemies. Save your procs for the bursts.
It does sound like you’re doing something wrong, but also I remember mobs reaching me just barely before they were dead. It can be rough. Invisibility is your friend. GL
Oh, and arcane is really hard when undergeared, as mobs will almost always reach you way before dieing.
Nothing worse than also getting Aether Missile and not having a clearcasting proc to use it! Before (in Dragon Flight) you could still channel Aether Missiles without a clearcasting proc. Better than letting it go to waste.
Simple, stupid-easy fix, make it inherit Clearcasting Properties, so you can cast whenever it procs.
Arcane Barrage hits like a wet paper noodle, or a damn semi. WAY too many modifiers on that spell. And that is all this game is now, modifiers stacked on-top of modifiers on-top of even more modifiers.
Off the top of my head, NOT counting trinket (on-use +main stat), JUST for Arcane Barrage https://www.wowhead.com/spell=44425/arcane-barrage, there are 62 modifiers.
The ones most affecting it:
Aether Vision, up to 20% more damage
Arcane Charges, 90% damage per charge
Arcane Harmony, up to 100% more damage
Arcane Bombardment, up to 100% more damage
Glorious Incandescence, up to 20% more damage
Not even including Tier Sets, Arcane Surge, and all that other crap. Makes it where we have excellent burst, but terrible sustain.
/rant
No, that’s not true. There was also the problem of balancing non-CC missiles with Arcane Blast and then again with CC buff. Making it only useable during CC solves that problem altogether and they don’t have to worry about it again and is the easiest solution which also ensure CC missiles will the damage it should.
The only problem with CC missiles right now imo is that it’s optimal do clip it when not buffed by Aether Attunement. I wish they’d shorten the channel to a single GCD just like they’ve done to Shadow Priest’s Mindflay: Insanity and solve this problem altogether as well.
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This is not a problem because:
if it isn’t powerful enough to fully cast because of the rest of the kit, then how is it overpowered and hard to balance?
The literal only power gain from allowing AM without clearcasting would be to consume aether attunement and there is a very easy way to fix that … just have aether attunement need to consume clearcasting
Because if it does good damage outside of CC, it might clash with Arcane Blast and it may do more damage than intended when it is buffed by CC. Overall it only being cast with CC makes the gameplay better especially when combined with Arcane Harmony like I mentioned before. Granted this problem was more prevalent when CC was a proc based on mana spent, it’s just easier for them to just have it this way.
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As you said earlier, it isn’t worth fully channeling the cast. it does less damage than blast so this is a non-issue.
I prefer the right solution over the easy one
(edit: in this case the right solution is for powers like Arcane Harmony to only be triggered by clearcasted arcane missiles. more code, but a more appropriate solution)
I think maybe what they should have done is keep free Arcane Missiles, but when CC procs then it buffs the spell. This way everyone is happy.
The only people who don’t let the channel finish and clip it early are the min/maxer crowd, everyone else plays the game the way it was intended and doesn’t go out of their way to do unintuitive things like that just to squeeze out a tiny bit more DPS. While strictly speaking it isn’t optimal to let the channel finish the difference in DPS is negligible at best. That disparity is only there in the first place because Blizzard didn’t buff AMs enough even though the whole reason to only make it castable when you get a CC proc was to ostensibly allow them to balance it properly with AB. Leaving AMs castable at will would have precluded them from balancing them at all. So just because they failed to buff AMs enough to make the degenerate behavior of clipping them early obsolete doesn’t mean that making them only castable during a CC proc wasn’t the right call. They just didn’t go far enough with the buffs, just like they never do out of some misplaced desire to hold back.
This! Aether Attunement should have always triggered a CC proc, the fact that it doesn’t makes it a much worse talent than it could. The possibility of a proc that requires so much to set up going wasted because you also didn’t get a different proc at the same time is maddeningly bad design. Idk why they are so petrified of buffing AA when it’s in such a sorry state atm.
Hell, they should redesign it completely so that it’s only an AoE talent but happens much more frequently because firing off multiple AMs at the same time is such a cool visual. For example it could be something like: Every enemy hit by Arcane Orb marks it with Aether Attunement making your next cast of Arcane Missiles cleave to all marked targets for x% of its damage.
Such lazy design with Arcane is really wild to me considering what the spec could be if they just had some vision… /smh
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Not really. Missiles with Aether Attunement does incredibly good DPS in AoE, so if they buff it more, either AA would go crazy or they’d have to nerf it. Damage breakdown is usually Arcane Barrage > Arcane Missiles (sometimes very close) > Arcane Blast in M+ and even in raid single target AM is still pretty good.
I think the optimal solution would be shortening AM cast to a GCD so we can’t clip it. That’s a buff to AM even for those that don’t clip it while have minimal effect on other areas, including Aether Attunement.
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My argument is that they should have taken a different approach to balancing AM, that doesn’t remove one of the main pieces of kit that a world-content arcane mage had.
They could have very easily just buffed missiles when clearcasted, instead of removing the ability to cast it without the proc. This would have removed the disruption for the more casual players while maintaining the balance.
The way you describe it sounds like engineering a fix for a problem that doesn’t exist. If they aren’t going to buff missiles then why compensate for anything, at all?
clipping missiles is not degenerate behavior
hard disagree here. removing one of the main tools for the most inexperienced players because the top players do something that doesn’t even exist because they never changed it is devoid of logic. what you write here sounds like someone trying to over-exaggerate a bad design example, except it is real and actually in the game
Aside from all of the flawed logic, there is a much more elegant solution to this perceived balance issue. Just buff missiles with clearcasting.
Since missiles were never buffed as you say, just add a tuning knob on clearcasted missiles. One practically already exists with the eureka talent, which is usually taken. If they want to make missiles more powerful when used, but only when clearcasted, then make eureka more powerful.
To me this change of requiring clearcasting reminds me of over-parenting when creative solutions are out there that are less disruptive and more satisfying. For example missiles could have a mana cost baseline, but then have clearcasting make it free to discourage people from spamming it (if they don’t know how to use arcane blast)
and to also address the damage makeup of an arcane mage in group content, the only reason missiles is so high is because of aether attunement. so that is another, different, tuning knob. whether missiles can be cast with clearcasting or not is irrelevant.
Before missiles required clearcasting, we only used them WITH clearcasting anyways. it is the difference of fixing something that isn’t broken – causing other problems
You’re hard projecting here because that’s what you’re doing, lol. You are the one doing mental gymnastics to arrive at the solution you want. The problem was very real and it was that they could never buff AM’s baseline damage when it was always castable. They fixed that problem by making it only castable with a CC proc. Was it a great solution? No, but baseline and aura buffs and nerfs are pretty much the only tools the devs ever use to balance individual spells. That’s how it’s always been and it’s unlikely to ever change.
There is no flawed logic here except your own. What you’re advocating is the status quo from before. AMs are already buffed when Clearcasting, that’s the whole point of the proc.
That’s exactly what it was and it was necessary precisely because the average player had no idea what to do with 2 spammable spells.
I’ve already explained what the broken thing was as have others in this thread and others, you just choose to ignore it. Idk what else to tell you about that.
It absolutely is and always has been. No one ever thought to do that until the number crunchers figured out it was a slight DPS increase. It’s completely unintuitive and something the devs themselves have repeatedly said they don’t intend to be the optimal playstyle but have yet to address it.
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You’re ignoring what I’m saying, and typing walls of text without saying anything.
As I said before, they can simply buff CLEARCASTED arcane missiles to address ALL of these problems.
Exactly.
This is lazy and needs to change.
Your thing that was broken was not even addressed, as you said before:
They didn’t even fix the issue that the nerf was supposed to help fix. This is a half-baked solution and you simply don’t understand why other people don’t like it. it’s not that you’re right, it’s that you don’t understand.
You really lose me with the clipping of arcane missiles being a “degenerate” thing. so someone is supposed to just stand there and let it finish when it’s not the ideal thing to cast? Someone is being a mega try-hard because they’re doing the thing that improves damage slightly?
Then, the crazy thing here is that you’re saying that arcane missiles needs to be nerfed yet casting a clearcasted version of it is not as powerful as casting a buffed blast/barrage so people are BOTH degenerates because they don’t want to fully channel the clearcasted arcane missiles since it is so weak, AND it needs to be nerfed.
This is devoid of logic
I honestly just personally dislike clipping missiles. Certainly wouldn’t call it degenerate, but I don’t enjoy clipping missiles, lol. I do it when it’s necessary/a gain to do it, but it makes me feel bleh.
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I agree, clipping missiles is very unsatisfying and I don’t always do it
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I was hoping they’d resolve this being a thing, but then they went and made it feel worse to play with Aethervision, imo.
Then Frostfire became relevant again, which had been a long-lost hope since Frostfire Bolt died way back when, so can’t justify Arcane from a playstyle perspective now. 
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sadly there is very little to justify bringing arcane to M+ anymore. I only play it because it is the spec I enjoy most, purely from a fun prospective and … purple and other illegitimate reasons.
The target cap would be OK if arcane truly had better prio damage, and better boss damage but the latest iteration kinda fails on all counts. Then, since it’s such a proc based spec when the tank takes a moment to pull with LoS or something all the buffs drop off and I’m hitting like a wet noodle – combined with the cooldown cadance of touch, you’re like 15 seconds away from a surge when the pack gets pulled.
Also touch of the magi does very little damage these days, all the damage is built into surge. It used to be cool to be on a 45 second cooldown but I don’t think I can call touch a cooldown anymore because it does so little (even with magi’s spark)
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You’re hyper focusing on the word and misconstruing its meaning. All “degenerate” means is something that’s abnormal with an emphasis on decline. It’s not a bad word, lol. It is not normal to want to cancel a channeled ability early and it’s a decline in the quality of the playstyle from the time when canceling early wasn’t a thing. I used “degenerate” to say all of that precisely so that I wouldn’t be blamed for using too many words. Alas, apparently it’s damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
I am not saying that. Blizzard said that and gave it as their reasoning for why they made AM castable only with a CC proc. They argued that AM always being available prevented them from balancing it because with the CC proc it would be too powerful if they increased its baseline damage. That’s perfectly valid. However, and we’re in agreement on this, when they changed it they didn’t buff AM enough which is why the clipping is still a thing.
The fundamental problem here isn’t even with AM, it’s Nether Precision that caused all of these problems and the reason why clipping came about in the first place. This is what happens when they fiddle with one thing and then it causes a chain reaction of unforeseen interactions that lead to awkward playstyles.
Having AM always be available was, at best, a minor QoL thing for open world content or when you just wanted to finish off a mob that wasn’t executed by your ABarr and you didn’t feel like casting 0 charge ABs. Giving that up so that AM could be properly balanced is a trade off everyone should be fine with. Again, the problem is that they didn’t go far enough with the buffs. But reverting the change isn’t the answer, they just need to buff AM’s baseline damage to where finishing the channel would be a clear DPS gain over interrupting it early in favor of an AB cast empowered by a NP proc. And quite frankly, right now it’s pretty damn close which is why I said that the folks who continue to clip are just tryhards and I stand by that.
Regardless of damage, I still think the best way to go about it is to just reduce the channel time to GCD length. It’ll make everything better, increases overall DPS marginally without having to tweak actual numbers and it won’t incentivize unintuitive behavior, which I know is a big deal for some people. It won’t affect Aether Attunement either since the damage isn’t changing, you just don’t clip during AA.
As for being tryhard, that’s just an exaggeration. It’s not like queueing an Arcane Blast or Barrage after pressing Arcane Missiles is giga sweaty behavior. Same as the double dipping used to be, you just press the buttons a bit earlier. It’s not intuitive, but it’s definitely not hard.