Dear Dev Team,
I hope you’re doing well! I wanted to share some thoughts after spending some time testing Sunfury Arcane with the proposed changes.
I tried out the new setup for about half an hour on a training dummy, and I’m finding a few issues that make the playstyle less enjoyable.
Burden on Barrage:
- The requirement to avoid queuing a spell while using Burden on Barrage feels a bit awkward. After using Burden on Barrage, you end up with zero charges, and then you need to cast a zero-charge Barrage with GI to get charges back. This seems to clash with the intended synergy of GI and BoP.
Burden on Blast:
- Applying Burden to Blast seems less effective now, as it’s more beneficial to use GI after AM to boost Barrage with NP. However, with the reduced AM procs due to less Barrage use, mana issues become more common before Evo is ready. This makes this approach less viable.
Rotation Synergy:
- The current design makes it challenging to align Burden and Barrage effectively. It feels like the hero tree is designed around Barrage, but the current setup makes it difficult to use these talents together in a coherent rotation.
Arcane Surge Duration:
- Reducing AS to 2 seconds makes it hard to use Barrage effectively. With the current duration, it’s a tight squeeze to get 3 Barrages off, and sometimes it results in losing all charges if the Barrage goes off too late. The 2-second duration might eliminate this challenge entirely, which seems to reduce the fun of the rotation.
Ramp-up Time:
The ramp-up time for Arcane Surge can be quite long, particularly with a cast-time trinket. Sometimes, by the time AS activates, mobs or bosses are already defeated, which can be a bit frustrating. However, when we do manage to fully utilize AS on tougher enemies, it’s incredibly satisfying! With the proposed reduction, it might feel like all that effort and ramp-up time doesn’t pay off as much, which could diminish that satisfying feeling.
Please consider reverting those changes. Instead tune the spec with more traditional methods that does not change the play style.
Thanks and have a great day!
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Probably because people who don’t usually post here saw the upcoming NP (I meant Burden) nerf and got upset enough to get on the forum or post from their mage toon that they don’t normally post on the forums with.
This is not a mystery.
You mean [what we feel is most important] than Quests that are still broken LIKE Scarab Scouting Truffle digging dirt. Still broke since Beta and PTR. 4th dirt pile vs. 5th dirt pile blab blab blab, now there’s NO dirt piles. It’s really messing with my completeness OCD. LOL
Sunfury Arcane has a really solid enjoyable rotation that does get affected by this change for what amounts to a very small nerf, I think the vast majority of arcane mages understand that you need to nerf it but nerfing the rotation is not the way to go about it. Please consider reverting this change like you did with the proposed nether precision one a couple weeks ago. We’re happy with getting our damage reined back in but we do not want it to come at the cost of a rotation we enjoy.
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I’m not going to go off on how bad of a change this is since everyone has already done so.
But I think it’s INCREDIBLY important for you guys to either:
- (The ONLY logical thing) Revert the change immediately
- (In the case you’ve lost your minds) Announce that you’re keeping the change and ideally explain why.
All the mages right now are in a state of uncertainty about whether these changes will be reverted or whether we should accept it and learn the new rotation, change specs, or change classes. Doing so quickly, ideally today, is extremely important with the launch of season 1 almost 1 week away. I hope for the sake of your players and your content creators that you do option 1 quickly.
2 Likes
Your class might be next.
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How bad you have to be at your job to think gutting enjoyable rotation for the rest of expansion is better than doing a simple damage nerf. That is crazy
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The burden of constant power changes is incredibly disheartening as a mage player. This is the most fun the spec has ever been, yet the APL is being completely overhauled less than two weeks before the season starts. While we agree that Sunfury is too strong, altering the entire rotation and making it less enjoyable goes against the core of what the game should be—fun. We’ve seen a similar situation with Nether Precision, where the change was eventually reverted. I’d like to understand the reasoning behind not allowing the double dip. Wouldn’t it have been more logical to nerf Spheres or Cascade instead? Tuning should not be achieved through major rotation changes, especially so close to the release of a new season. This was even emphasized by WoW devs in a recent interview with Naguura.
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That’s always an issue when there’s a desirable item in group content.
I’m very, very concerned about the implications of the Sunfury nerfs. Preliminary math from the community seems to suggest that they represent somewhere in the neighborhood of a 4% nerf without any changes to how people play Sunfury Arcane, which will presumably go down once people do more testing and figure out the optimal rotation. On paper, that’s not catastrophic.
The parts I’m concerned about, however, are twofold:
1.) This, like the proposed Nether Precision double-dipping “bugfix”/change from the beta, removes an aspect of the hero talent’s gameplay that people enjoy. I believe balance changes should preserve fun, emergent gameplay whenever possible.
2.) This hotfix does nothing to address how far behind Sunfury-- even nerfed Sunfury-- Spellslinger Arcane is in PvE content. The last reckoning I saw put Spellslinger Arcane somewhere around 20% behind Sunfury Arcane; even with this nerf, the difference would still be double digits.
Taken as a whole-- removing fun gameplay from Sunfury while simultaneously allowing Spellslinger to languish in a considerably undertuned state-- suggests a fundamental disconnect from the day to day experience of playing Arcane. I would urge y’all to reconsider what your goals are for Arcane and how you’re seeking to reach those goals. It is imperative that hero talents are well balanced against each other, especially in the case of Arcane. Sunfury is, quite frankly, very off-theme in its presentation and visual style for Arcane and is strongly dominated by the Fire Mage aesthetic. Not having a viable alternative in Spellslinger that exudes the Arcane aesthetic is discouraging to the point that I’ve been stalling for time by leveling my evoker, hoping that balance changes arrive.
Needless to say, making Sunfury less fun was not the balance change I was hoping for.
3 Likes
Tehra, the reason behind this change is; 1. Blizzard doesn’t like fun to be had. 2. Blizzard is forcing certain builds to be played. They can’t tune the bases classes now they have to tune for the base classes plus 2 hero talents for each spec. 3. Shaman was to close to being meta in M+ they can’t allow that.
True, however from and outside looking in perspective it’s clear to see the trinket itself is blatantly overtuned. It’s to be seen honestly, as there seem to be potentially other problematic trinkets on the horizion as well. Yet I wouldn’t put too much stock into it right now as there is a good chance we will see a trinket tuning pass before the season starts.
I’m sure this is an obvious bit of information, but do these changes affect lower levels? I would think that it does, but I don’t know.
pack leader still spending off KC instead of RS/MB for surv…
bit of a disappointment
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Meanwhile Unholy feels just weak and no buffs.
Actually insane how hard they are gutting Enhancement Shaman when we cant even sniff Ret, or hunter in dungeons.
2 Likes
Revert Burden of Power double dipped please, you will kill the fun
Feral is going to be deadly…and i feel like ive been nerfed into the ground.
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The problem with Firestorm isn’t damage, the problem is it’s a 2-4 point investment for a highly situational ability that’s rarely possible to get the full value out of, in exchange for 2-4 points in talents that are always beneficial in every scenario.
This has been an issue with the current implementation of talent trees, there’s so many mandatory points that the amount of actual choice is negligible at best. Firestorm would need to be in a completely different place in the tree or get buffed by 200% before anyone considers taking it for anything outside of extreme niche scenarios. It’s an interesting idea for a spell, but it’s never worth the cost.
