I feel like I may be in the extreme minority here, but I absolutely love how arcane works. I love the idea of being able to hit like a truck when I get all my charges up, managing Presence of Mind and Arcane Power to get even more out of my damage, and I love the fact that there’s a burn and recharge period of their damage. I find Fire way too easy for me to screw up with, and Frost is okay, but it’s actually that spec that doesn’t seem very interesting to me because it all feels like damage that builds up slowly, apart from Glacial Spike.
Again, I feel like I’m in the minority here, and maybe I’m objectively wrong or something. What’s wrong with arcane right now?
I just started WoW in late May, so I’ve only known arcane as it is now. I think the main complaint is that Arcane Missiles isn’t the premier damage spell it used to be (and should be), and the rotation is kind of dull as repeatedly casting Arcane Blast is our primary damage source.
I started as Fire but got sick of waiting for crits. I also noticed as I progressed through WoD and Legion that virtually every equipment upgrade forced me to sacrifice crit (or sacrifice tons of int, mastery, haste, etc). I found that Arcane gave me more consistent damage, but IMO, TBH, it’s pretty boring compared to fire… ie, it sounds, looks, and plays rather bland.
I do however love Arcane Explosion for low-level farming:)
any time you have to move, the spec becomes garbage
having to be in melee range to do effective AoE damage feels really terrible as a squishy wizard
arcane charges are an uninteresting system because they only work with a few spells
the base toolkit of arcane is boring and uninspired, it’s the most generic “build > spend” spec in the game. mana management doesn’t cover for the fact that the spec is very choreographed and uninteractive
a few of the things that made arcane interesting and gave it nuance, like missiles and blast interacting with arcane charges, mark of aluneth, touch of the magi, and mystic kilt were removed in bfa with no real replacements, or were made into talents
arcane needs a massive revamp with a more interesting baseline toolkit and less punishment on fights where mobility is required…which is like…all of them
it’s fine at low levels or for world content but so is everything else, people complain because the spec feels like garbage in late game content compared to how it used to play
Actually, the other thing left out, that is arguably worse than the others is that almost every talent row and every azerite trait forces you to choose between an entirely ST or entirely AoE option. You are effectively garbage at one or the other, and cleave is nonexistent.
Probably the worst designed spec in the game by a large margin.
Yes, I can’t think of any other spec I play that’s got so many either/or talents. It’s not only poorly conceptualized and designed, but it’s by far the most ignored spec in the game.
I’ve said many times before, I’m not sure if it’s an issue of developer apathy, ignorance, hate or “other,” but someone high up really doesn’t seem to care for arcane. As you can tell by the “oh it’s bottom 3 again, give it 6%” thing.
Poor Azerite trait choices. Equipoise is basically forced because it’s tuned so much higher than the others. This also forces a specific playstyle and talent build with little room for flexibility
Poor Azerite Essence choices. Visions of Perfection is bad and Lucid Dreams is really boring for arcane. These 2 add a lot of flavor to many other specs. Arcane is stuck with the generic boring ones
Can’t stack missiles charges without a PvP talent, meaning there is no strategy to banking charges for movement if Slipstream is used. No real decision making around missiles, just press the button when clearcasting lights up (outside of burn)
Arcane Barrage cleave is awkward - requires tightly clumped mobs, requires you to be facing all the targets, and doesn’t fire on cc’d targets. A fire mage in the group using Dragon’s Breath as you barrage will cancel all the cleave
Spam drinking in M+ sucks, especially during bursting and quaking weeks. No other DPS spec has to deal with this for optimal DPS
Massive haste is awful (ie last boss in Temple of Sethraliss). Mana regen doesn’t scale with haste so you can oom yourself in seconds and be stuck casting 0-1 charge barrages. It actually feels bad to get a massive haste buff, while other specs either feel awesome or don’t really change.
Clearcasting tied to mana usage doesn’t play nice with Equipoise. You also can’t really force more missiles procs like you could in Legion with Arcane Orb, so missiles-oriented builds are limited
Arcane Power on GCD is atrocious. It’s a 10 second cooldown, and with the standard opener of Charged Up → Rune of Power → Arcane Power, you’re spending 3 globals just setting up. Also, if you don’t take Overpowered, you’re at a real risk of losing DPS by pressing Arcane Power because you have to sacrifice a global just to activate it.
Arcane Explosion doesn’t play nice with Equipoise. If you need to AE for a bit while in conserve, you might screw your next burst if you don’t get back to a good Equipoise threshold before it’s ready
For casual play where performance isn’t a concern, sure Arcane can seem okay. It’s actually quite good for world questing too, since most of these issues aren’t really relevant there.
it’s honestly just hilarious to me that a spec with such a massive, untapped design space in terms of lore is so boring and one-note, it actually feels like zero thought went into bfa arcane
like think about how many mobs and bosses use arcane magic in world of warcraft. arcane beams, arcane orbs, hell, even time magic. if they insist on arcane being “cyclical” in the sense of building and dumping charges, can’t they give it some more oomph?
imagine bringing back alter time. imagine having an arcane ray spell that actually does aoe. imagine a spec that uses time magic to control the battlefield, rewinding enemies to where they were a few seconds ago to help the tank kite or to secure a kill in arena before you get los’d
imagining freezing an enemy in time as a ranged stun or creating illusions that confuse and misdirect
but no. we get arcane blast, rune of power, and arcane power on the gcd.
OP, arcane is great for questing, and maybe lfr and some easy dungeons. It is the best mage spec for mount farming prior expansions. Try out the time anomoly talent!
But yeah it is by far the worst spec in the game for raids and m+. In legion the gameplay was still flawed but a lot more fun.
I enjoy it for questing. Love finding a group of NPCs, making them follow and activating Arcane Explosion. For PvP and dungeons, the class is a good support role. One of the drawbacks is when you’re confronted with a powerful enemy, you really need them distracted so you can charge up and then deal damage.
Did my first 10 key as an arcane mage last night. Wasn’t bad. As fun as I remember it being in Legion (even if the AoE is nerfed).
I went with 3 x Explosion, 1 Equipoise, 2 Galvanzing Spark for my traits. No one complained about my deeps.
I would like to try Pressure+Spark+Nethertempest … Many years later and I still hate having to be in melee range for AoE. Thank the Gods the tank was boss at controlling the mob.
I’ve done several +10 - +14 keys, the key to performing well is going full aoe (three explosive echo traits). My performance is usually on par with our havoc dh dps, maybe better depending on how much the tank can pull because arcane sustained aoe dps is pretty insane.
The only time I usually deviate from full aoe is tyrannical king’s rest, because the trash packs are smaller and some of the bosses need to be bursted down. Otherwise if our tank can pull decently I usually average out about 35k overall dps, maybe higher if it’s teeming / fortified.
I guess it’s just the RNG nature of the trait I don’t like … but Bloodmallet has 3 x explosion miles ahead on damage for AoE than any other trait so I’ll stick with it and cringe at being in melee range like I always did.
You do no damage at all unless youre spending loads of mana, even then your damage doesnt equal the mana cost… Moving and casting is non existant. Thanks to the jacked up talent trees we have to pick between things that dont even make sense. i.e-
Mana shield - Shimmer - Slipstream
Resonance - charged up - super nova
Overpowered - Time anomaly - Arcane orb
None of those should be on the same row as each other. they all are really stupidly placed. Imagine how much better the spec would be if arcane orb, super nova and shimmer / resonance was base line and they were filled in with new talents that actually were relatable to which row they are in.
It was actually commented on in Legion but they did nothing about it then and carried the mismatch of talents into BfA.
I’ve said before in another thread: there is NO reason or justification for arcane orb not being baseline. It’s definitely not a top tier talent now that missiles aren’t a proc. It does a pittance of AoE damage not equal to any other top tier talent for any class.
Frozen orb does more damage and has more functionality for frost mages and it’s baseline.
I had so much fun in Legion being able to bank three AM stacks and just drilling the mob arcane-machine-gun-style. I couldn’t believe that they cut that out in BfA alpha just to re-implement it as a PvP-only talent (on top of all the other changes).
There was even a really cool arcane HUD in the default UI that showed your AM stacks.
I’ve been a big proponent of the “revert Arcane to Legion” stance. No Mark of Aluneth? Not a problem. Redesign Nether Tempest to properly replace it.
Would this approach fix all of Arcane’s problems? No way. There is still the issue that Arcane is nearly impossible to balance due to the bipolar burn/conserve cycle. However, at least we’d be better off than we are now.
I’m really hoping that 9.0 is going to represent a design shift back toward class and spec fantasy and intrinsic power gain as you level (as opposed to per-expansion gimmicks).
Legion spoiled us because the theme of the expansion was a huge focus on class/spec design. Many of us started believing that this was how WoW would be designed going forward, with a strong emphasis on class design.
I’m pretty sure that the devs realized their mistake and how much work it would actually be to properly redesign classes post-Legion way too late in the BfA dev cycle.
Unfortunately, due to their overriding no-major-class-changes policy during an expansion, they are letting it slide while working on the next expansion (we hope, because the alternative is that they are fine with arcane being the shell of a spec that it is now).
Arcane missiles are now on their own skill tree as a level 2 arcane school spell (think of how death coil and fear are on different schools) and will now similar require the mage to start recasting the ability after being kicked on a channel.
[ Arcane torrent] a channel ability that releases a bolt at the target every 0.75 seconds that deals 125% of intellect and explodes dealing 50% of intellect to near by enemies with in 8 yards. Generates charges while being channeled. High mana cost.
[Arcane Familiar] attacks from the arcane familiar have a 15% chance to give the mage arcane power for 5 seconds.
[Clear casting] now makes your next casted ability instant or reduces the channel time of your next arcane missiles or arcane torrent by 20% Stores up to 3 charges. No Duration.
[Arcane Missiles] channel duration reduced to 1.5 seconds base.
[Shimmer] added to base line, with 1 stack.
[Frost nova] removed from arcane and fire tree’s
Super nova added to baseline.
Super nova will now deal 80% of intellect and will now deal a bonus 120% damage if the target is below 30%. No longer knocks up.
polymorph is removed from base line
Talents
[Amplification] replaced by neither tempest.
[Neither tempest] attacks from arcane blast or arcane missiles leaves neither tempest on the target for 3 seconds dealing 130% of intellect over 8 seconds.
[Mana Shield] reduce mana cost to 42%
[Slipstream] will once again grant movement while channeling arcane missiles (non-clear casting state).
[Shimmering step] grants a second stack of shimmer and increases displacement time by 5 seconds.
[Mirror Image] will now have a 30% chance to be summoned on arcane blast, fireball, or frostbolt
[Rune of Power] will now generate a rune granting a bonus effect for each rune on use of missiles or arcane torrent reducing the cast time while in clear casting state by an additional 10%.
[Ice Ward] now called Arcane Ward, granting a second stack of super nova.
[ Unpredictable Destruction ] (in place of super nova on tree) causes your arcane torrents bolts aoe range to be increased by 5 yards and deal an additional 10% damage.
Ring of frost removed.
Improved Polymorph added in place of frost nova.
Improved polymorph allows you to po
[Arcane meteor added] in neither tempest.
[Arcane meteor] now summons meteor at the target falling very quickly, dealing 150% Damage ad generating 4 arcane charges. 30 second cool down. stuns for 2 seconds.
[Arcane Barrier] summons a barrier at the target location which cannot be entered or existed for 5 seconds. Players inside cannot be targeted or damaged.
[Reverberate] causes arcane missiles to have a 15% chance to deal 30% more damage, and generate an extra arcane charge.
[Touch of the Magi] now applies on all damage but is capped at 35k damage absorbed.
[Time Anomaly] moved to pvp talents
[Blackhole] Added to 100 talent tier in place of time anomaly.
[Blackhole] now pulls targets into it quickly, if the target reaches or touches the center, the blackhole will immediately super nova dealing 225% of intellect in damage and knocking them 30 yards. after 3 seconds the ability will super nova dealing 125% damage to enemies with in 30 yards (but will not knock) and will dispell any positive effect on targets hit by it (acts as mass dispel)
PvP Talents
add polymorph to pvp talents for fire/frost (frost gets deep freeze back, and fire gets a 5 second stun)
[Slow speech] returned to arcane mage replaces slow and now causes the target to cast spells 30% slower
[Prismatic orb] Your arcane orb not directly fires at the target dealing 350% of intellect but now has a 45 second cool down.
[Mass teleport] teleports you and a near by ally to the target. 2.5 minute cool down. 3 second cast. The target cannot be in combat, and if interrupted while casting th e spell will incur its cool down.
[Torment the Weak] will now slow 3 targets and increase the speed by 15%.
[Enchanted food] will now allow you to consume conjured food while in combat, but will break on damage. Stacks of food will be reduced to 5. and summoning food now incurs a 1.5m cool down.