Updated Notes for War Within

  • MAGE

    • Sunfury

      • Glorious Incandescence has been updated:

        • Now summons 4 Meteorites (was 8).
        • Increased Meteorite’s Fire Blast cooldown reduction by 100%.
        • Increased Meteorite’s Arcane Orb cooldown reduction by 100%.
        • Meteorite damage increased by 100%.
        • The timing between Meteorites dealing damage and their associated spell cooldown reduction effects have been better synchronized.
    • Spellslinger

      • Arcane

        • Controlled Instincts has been redesigned – For 8 seconds after being struck by an Arcane Orb, 30% of the direct damage dealt by an Arcane Splinter is also dealt to nearby enemies. Damage reduced beyond 5 targets.
        • Spellslingers now conjure two Splinters when they consume Nether Precision.
        • Splintering Orbs now conjures two Arcane Splinters when they strike a target with their Arcane Orb.
        • Arcane Splinterstorms now have a 20% chance to grant you Clearcasting (was 100%).
    • Arcane

      • New Talent: Energized Familiar – During Time Warp or other similar effects, your Arcane Familiar fires 4 bolts instead of 1. Damage from your Arcane Familiar has a small chance to grant you up to 2% of your maximum mana.

      • New Talent: Eureka – When a spell consumes Clearcasting, its damage is increased by 25%.

      • New Talent: Wizened Wit – The cast time of Arcane Blast is reduced by 10%. Choice node with Presence of Mind.

      • New Talent: Arcane Battery – Each time you consume Clearcasting, gain 1%/2% increased spell damage for 30 seconds, stacking up to four times. 2-point talent.

      • New Talent: Time Loop – When you gain a stack of Arcane Battery, you have a small chance to gain another stack of Arcane Battery. This effect can trigger off of itself.

      • New Talent: Aether Attunement – While at maximum stacks of Arcane Battery, your next Arcane Missiles consumes Arcane Battery dealing 150% increased damage to your primary target and also fires at up to 4 nearby enemies.

      • New Talent: Leysight – Nether Precision damage bonus increased to 30%.

      • New Talent: Leydrinker – Every 6 times you consume Nether Precision, your next Arcane Blast echoes, repeating its damage at 50% effectiveness to the primary target and up to two nearby enemies.

      • New Talent: Improved Touch of the Magi – Your Touch of the Magi now accumulates 25% of the damage you deal.

      • New Talent: Magi’s Spark – Your Touch of the Magi now also conjures a spark, increasing the damage your target receives from your next Arcane Barrage, Arcane Blast, and Arcane Missiles by 25%. Upon receiving damage from all three spells, the spark explodes, dealing Arcane damage to all nearby enemies. Choice node with Improved Touch of the Magi.

      • New Talent: Nether Munitions – When Magi’s Spark or Improved Touch of the Magi detonates, it increases the damage all affected targets take from you by 8% for 12 seconds.

      • Arcane Missiles has been redesigned – Can now only be cast when you have Clearcasting. The wording of talents that are associated with Arcane Missiles have been updated to reflect this change.

      • Nether Precision has been redesigned – Consuming Clearcasting increases the damage of your next 2 Arcane Blasts by 20% or your next 2 Arcane Barrages by 20%.

      • Arcane Familiar has been redesigned – Casting Arcane Intelligence also summons you a Familiar that attacks your enemies and increases your maximum mana by 10% for 1 hour. Now passive.

      • Illuminated Thoughts has been redesigned – Clearcasting has a 5% increased chance to trigger and spells that consume Clearcasting deal 5% more damage.

      • Concentration has been redesigned – Casting Arcane Blast has a small chance to make your next cast of Arcane Blast free.

      • Improved Prismatic Barrier is now baseline.

      • Many talents have had their positions changed.

      • Moved Charged Orb and Improved Clearcasting to the first gate.

      • Rule of Threes is no longer a choice node with Arcane Familiar.

      • The following talents have been removed:

        • Foresight
        • Nether Tempest
        • Reverberate
        • Mana Gem
        • Radiant Spark
        • Harmonic Echo
        • Cascading Power
    • Fire

      • Controlled Destruction now has a stack cap of 50 (was 99). Pyroblast increases damage the target takes from your Ignite by 1% (was 2%)
    • Frost

      • New Talent: Death’s Chill – While Icy Veins is active, damaging an enemy with Frostbolt increases spell damage by 1%.
      • Fractured Frost has been redesigned – While Icy Veins is active, your Frostbolts hit up to 2 additional targets. Now a 1-point talent.
      • Hailstones is now a 1-point talent.
      • Fractured Frost and Freezing Winds have swapped places in the talent tree.
      • Cold Front and Coldest Snap have swapped places in the talent tree.

Personally, some are neat.

  • New Talent: Aether Attunement – While at maximum stacks of Arcane Battery, your next Arcane Missiles consumes Arcane Battery dealing 150% increased damage to your primary target and also fires at up to 4 nearby enemies.

The drawback, it can only be used with clearcasting because arcane missiles can only be fired with clearcasting. This effectively what, makes us an arcane blast turret?

Still neat stuff. Sad they removed Nether Tempest. Would have liked to have seen it buffed. Pretty and visual spell.

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Am I the only one that was saddened to see Radiant Spark is going away? This has been one of my favorite parts of the spec and a big reason I switched over to playing Arcane.

I would have preferred to see it changed so that Arcane Missiles didn’t interact with the spark. I think that would lower complexity in a good way, and still keep the fun complexity bits.

Another idea would be to make Radiant Spark a passive effect that happens whenever Touch of the Magi has been cast as a talent choice. I see there are a couple of talents that buff Touch in away to compensate for spark being removed, perhaps it could exist without being a button that is pressed.

Maybe there are a lot of people out there who used to play Arcane but don’t now because they don’t like the complexity of the spec, but this is what initially drew me to Arcane. I worry next expansion there will not be a class/spec that appeals strongly to me.

I just spent the last two years learning/practicing this spec and am finally getting good at it, and it seems like my efforts might have been for a very fleeting benefit which does not feel good. There aren’t many classes that have had this level of detail, and the others aren’t a class fantasy for me, personally.

I do like that Arcane is getting attention but I’m hoping it’s not reinvented

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I too am saddened by the removal of radiant spark. I understand that the spec in it’s current form is complex and intimidating to learn and I am all for them providing simpler to learn builds but removing the ramp style of radiant spark entirely goes against what the blue posts were saying about wanting to keep the complex, high skill ceiling aspects of the spec intact.

They are removing radiant spark, nether tempest and mana gem and what they are giving us in return is magi’s spark. This new ability will cause touch of the magi to summon a spark that will amp one cast each of blast, barrage and missiles by 25% and then explode for aoe damage. This is not a ramp talent nor is it single target friendly. casting a barrage in single target after your touch will probably be a bigger loss of damage than this explosion and damage amp will provide unless it lasts long enough to cast the barrage right at the end of the touch window.
Even in this ideal scenario of casting the barrage at the end of touch, there is very little interaction with anything else in the kit because you cast blast and missiles normally. Having to sink a barrage into the target last second adds some timing complexities where you now have to time your barrage to hit the target before touch expires and, unlike blast, it has a travel time making it punishing for players standing at 40 yds.

I do think it’s cool that nether precision will work on barrage but I feel there will be a lot of munched procs since we normally have four arcane charges before we cast it in aoe. We might get two or more clearcasting procs before we build back up to four charges leading to overwritten procs unless we want to spend them on blast but then why bother letting it buff barrage then. Letting it buff explosion might alleviate this concern.

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Frost news are underwhelming :frowning:

Are they rly +fine+ by the abysimal glacial gameplay and the SUPER oldschool Deathborne stuff?

Please bring something new! and scrap that Spellslinger Hero-Tree.
Such a boring tree…its sad! :frowning:

Hopefully they will buff fractured frost up to 5-8 targets! Atm its just boring :(( nobody wants the super boring Deathborn gameplay again!

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I agree wholeheartedly.

I feel like in general instead of greatly altering the rotation it would be more interesting if Arcane weren’t forced to play in melee.

I think the whole melee caster thing is truly the reason that not as many people play Arcane. Being stuck in melee with the major AoE power putting out a long frontal is the most challenging part, to me.

Having a complicated rotation is really fun to learn. People like Asmongold use this spec as a scapegoat for “WoW is too complicated!” but once the rotation is learned it is no longer all that complicated. I actually really like the scripted feeling. It feels like I’m concocting something.

TBH I feel a little lost. I’ve had this project to work on, getting good at Arcane, and it’s been an excuse to run any key any time. So that I can get better. But now that it’s going to be simplified I’m not sure I have the same motivation to play.

Please consider the melee aspect of Arcane instead of removing the Spark, Mana Gem, Nether Tempest, etc.

I’d imagine that, considering we already Arcane Barrage > Touch of the Magi so it hits the target after Touch has being applied, you won’t have to worry about it since Touch also refunds all 4 Arcane Charges.

Or put more succinctly, “we really do want arcane to have crap aoe.”

2 Likes

I didn’t put a concrete idea to how to move arcane out of melee range. I think a simple and very satisfying way to do this would be to have a talent that moves Arcane Explosion to the target’s location. Perhaps it could cost more mana the farther away they are.

If we are more AoE capped I think our prio damage should be really solid.

I’m glad that Magi’s Spark is there as an alternative but I think Radiant Spark should be kept as an option too for us tryhards.

It is easy for us to not mention that there is a lot of cool stuff going on in the talents. I appreciate the work being done and do not mean any of this criticism harshly. I Just think that there is a certain elegance to the Arcane spec right now that has value, and I wonder if the Blizzard team is underestimating how those of us who do play it do really enjoy it.

Looking at the raider IO list of arcane mages, there are a ton of us that only play arcane even though fire is so good, and frost is doing more damage. If an ice cream shop sells a ton of chocolate chip and wants to branch out it makes sense to add a flavor, and not remove the popular one in hopes that people buy the other new one.

likewise, fire has two solid builds currently. I think Arcane could have two solid builds as well. For Arcane, the tryhard nerd spec, and the more approachable build for newer people or people who hate playing Radiant Spark. Ty for considering!

I have since been given access to the alpha and it does work that way so the barrage isn’t an issue.

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I need to know, is Arcane truly easier to play, it’s been a love hate relationship with me and Arcane, I love the Theme and Aesthetic but it’s just currently out of my level to play.

Considering you are in Alpha, do you personally think it be easier to pick up play since the rework?.

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Wow! This is a big shift. I don’t even know. Definitely gonna have to play it to get it. That’s a hefty change on lots of the talents.

Just wow! I mean how does it play? I just have no idea yet what this looks like.

Happy to see most of those removed talents gone, but NT is one of my favorites. It’s the only DoT we got. I always wanted to see it tuned up and be a major player.

I am sad the 100% chance of CC proc got nerfed to 20%. They seem to hate the idea of letting arcane control damage output, rather have a “chance” at damage.

From first glance it looks like “more RNG”, and “more complicated steps to get to your damage.” So, par for the course there. The big issue I take with predominate RNG based damage (orb barrage is a great example right now), is they tend to balance us to the exception (a positive proc) and not factor in the norm (a negative proc) and then we look great when the dice rolls positive, but suck otherwise.

Man I just will have to play it out, too much change to know where this is at. And how it plays off hero talents is gonna be a new dynamic.

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Yea, that’s a weird way to play it…so orb, then I’ve got 8 seconds to get splinters to do their thing and just before the 8 seconds ticks away throw another orb? Are they trying to get us to hold onto orbs? Or is this going to basically be active all the time and I don’t have to think about it. As in, I’m gonna have an orb going out less than 8 seconds almost all the time. If orb barrage is still going to be a thing, then maybe this is fine. But seems they want to trickle damage over long time, rather than give us a solid AOE “Blam!” option.

Wow, you want us to put 2 talent points into an ability we hate, nice! 2 points for constant frustration as it falls off right before you roll into burst.

Wait! So you can’t even get to missile barrage unless you also saddle up to battery’s nonsense. These two things do not need to be connected! And the trade off? I drop overall dmg by 8% so I can get 150% boost and some small AE on one of our weakest dmg spells?!? I would never cast missiles, that trade off isn’t even close. You’d have to grant like 500% single target and 300% to additional targets with no cap (or like 8 cap) to make that worth it.

Get rid of battery!!! It’s just a maintenance buff we have to keep up all the time that keeps trying to fall off every 20 seconds (now looking like 30 seconds). It’s game play with no play. I spam a button to keep it active, that’s not fun.

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Battery is indeed terrible, nobody likes it and everybody would be happier to see it gone but with how much they are buffing Missiles plus the talent that buffs CC by 25% damage I imagine it will hit very hard.

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The ramp aspect has been completely removed. Magi’s spark is effectively passive. The spec will be way less punishing because you won’t be able to mess up your radiant spark window by accidentally pressing missiles or having to move too much. They basically cut out the first half of the burst window and didn’t replace it with anything.

In a recent blue post they said something about shifting the spec to be more buff tracking oriented. If that holds true then you are swapping out the scripted ramp play style for a buff tracking one instead. Ultimately it comes down to whichever you are better with.

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I have my Arcane mage ready for TWW, I’m excited!

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