Why does Radiant Spark Exist?

Classes Mage
1

A very simple and straightforward question I’d like your thoughts on.

Folks that have been reading this forum know that I am a staunch opponent of Rune of Power and hate everything about that spell with a passion. However, I am pretty sure my dislike for RS is even stronger.

For starters RS would be completely pointless if it couldn’t be paired with TotM (and RoP). So much so that with the Arcane buff from earlier today when they finally relented and gave RS the major QoL change it needed with the increased duration they also increased the duration of TotM by the same amount. Meaning that it’s clearly their intent for those spells to be used in tandem (see footnote 1).

So if that’s the case why in the world do we need to waste a talent point (or two if you also want to get Harmonic Echo), take up an ability slot on our action bars, and waste a GCD to cast RS when it’s effect can simply be baked into TotM? I mean for crying out loud, RS doesn’t even have Arcane visuals and is a straight up copy and paste job that was never part of the spec before SL. All this does is further belabor an already overcomplicated rotation and add to the truly atrocious ramp up time Arcane has to put up with.

In other words my contention is that RS exists only to annoy the player and that it needs to go.

(1) Not that players are doing that of course, because we just have to complicate our lives even further mess with the order these spells are used in to maximize output. But that’s on us, or rather on you all who are using RS because I for one never have and never will.

P.S. The same can be said about merging Siphon Storm with Arcane Surge or simply removing it altogether and buffing AS to compensate. This will also free up talent slots so that we can get some real capstones.

19 Likes
2

I like RS. Getting a 30% Surge boost and a 40% Barrage boost inside the Magi window seems good to me. I’m excited about the buffs. 18 seconds of increased damage between burst phases with the 4 set is huge imo. And how could anyone that has played Arcane for as long as you find the rotation complicated? I find it super easy. I’m torn between Spriest and Arcane now going into S2. Arcane just got a huge buff and Shadow got a big nerf on Psychic Link. PL is all there is for Shadow AoE after the rework.

3

I guess you didn’t read my post thoroughly. I am not questioning what RS brings to the table or the results it yields. I am asking why it needs to be a separate spell when it could just as easily be merged into TotM. It further complicates an already bloated rotation and increases the insane ramp up time. It also sticks out like a sore thumb because it doesn’t even have Arcane visuals.

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4

Why does Rune of Power exist?

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5

Exactly! 10char

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6

The interaction of dumping a 4-charge [Arcane Barrage] on the last stack of [Radiant Spark] followed by a [Touch of the Magi] before it lands, refilling your charges and setting up for maximum damage [Arcane Blast] wouldn’t be possible if they were separate spells. And to be honest, I really like that interaction and think it would be a shame if it were removed.

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7

Honestly I like Radiant Spark more than Touch of the Magi. I still think that TotM is what’s made arcane so degenerate over the last two expansions.

We went from a 1.5 minute burst to a 45 second burst. That means all our setup and preparations went from having a 90 second window to a 45 second window, and it’s simply too much to try to pull off in that time frame without losing your mind.

Ignoring Rune of Power for a moment, if Touch was eliminated and we went back to something with more of a burn / conserve style, radiant spark would have a good role to fill. The burst phase would still be basically the same, but you’d now be able to rack up stacks of harmony with your clearcasting procs and then when Radiant Spark came off cooldown, you’d do the standard 4 blasts and a barrage to get whatever damage you managed to build up. Because Spark has a shorter cooldown, you’d also be more at liberty to decide if you want to use it with only 15 stacks of harmony or if you want to see if you can get one more proc to get the max benefit. It would add some player agency back into our rotation. That’s what I miss about arcane - the player agency. Now everything is scripted.

We wouldn’t be as punished for not using barrage with max harmony stacks. We wouldn’t be punished for not getting all our buffs out for touch. We wouldn’t be as punished for having to wait a few moments to dodge a mechanic. We wouldn’t be as punished for our target dying early. We wouldn’t be as punished for needing to switch targets. We wouldn’t be as punished for our target going immune or outranging us.

I’d vote to remove Touch of the Magi and give us Charged Up back. We’d obviously need some numbers tuning to compensate but I will continue to argue that Touch is what broke us, people were just more willing to accept that touch is thing than they were the covenant powers and legendaries.

tl;dr Radiant Spark would be a perfectly fine addition to the old version of arcane.

8

I guess after playing Spriest, Arcane doesn’t seem bloated to me. It’s a simple rotation. Spriest is way more complicated. I play too much and it has taken me about 2 1/2 weeks to kinda start getting it. Arcane took a few hours. I’m just happy Arcane is getting buffed. I consider it a substantial power increase and Arcane is strong already. When I group with an Arcane Mage as my Spriest in m+, they do massive damage on bosses. It will really be insane now. The sustained will also be very good with the tier set.

9

Sustained damage as an Arcane mage doesn’t really matter when that’s like 20% of your overall damage. It stacks so many modifiers that it just can’t help but have everything behind those 45s cycles, which is why the 4pc is universally hated by anyone that’s familiar with how Arcane functions. It is the very definition of putting all your eggs in one basket, so if you for some reason mess it up, bye-bye damage.

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10

Arcane’s sustained damage does not exist. In raids, there are some brief 2-5 second windows where I did more damage than the entire rest of the raid combined, but then there are long stretches where tanks (and occasionally a healer) are telling me to sit down.

During our bust, we’re doing 40% more damage from RoP, 25% more from Surge, 20% more from touch, and an additional ~44% extra for 5 spells with Radiant Spark and Harmonic Echo. That’s not counting bonuses from Siphon Storm, Mana Gem, or Arcane Harmony.

Just between RoP, Surge, and Touch, that’s 85% increased damage. The upcoming 2 set is going to make that 95% increased damage (extra 10% from surge). That means that the 4 set bonus will be at best allowing us to do ~25% of the extra damage we could have done during our burst. But that’s ignoring the fact that you need to jump through hoops to get that bonus AND that you’ll have no stacks of harmony AND Evocation (And I’m assuming Mana gem - I don’t remember if it still has a cooldown) will be on cooldown.

The two set, honestly, I’m happy with. It seems really strong - possibly too strong for a 2 set bonus (or at least the 2 sets I’ve been used to getting). But the 4 set doesn’t feel anywhere near as satisfying.

11

I suppose it’s a chicken or egg type of philosophical discussion but I think we can all agree that no one is enjoying the degenerate cooldown stacking playstyle that started with RoP, was then doubled down on with with TotM, and now tripled down on with RS.

Arcane went from on-demand burst driven entirely by player agency via mana management to being forced to execute a byzantine rotation every 90 seconds and a slightly less complex one every 45 seconds or do tank DPS. Over-complicated rotation and a ramp up so long you can fall asleep during it.

And no matter how much feedback we give Blizzard just double down on the above. It’s exhausting.

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12

I do want to be clear: I don’t think that concept with how the spec currently plays is bad, just that the execution isn’t great and it’s not the arcane that I fell in love with.

I’m at a point where this rotation isn’t difficult to do. However, doing this rotation and watching out for mechanics burns me out faster than it used to. I’m capable of it, but not like I was. I used to be the back-up callouts guy in raid. Now? I can’t focus on all those things enough to provide callouts for the group. Thankfully we have plenty of others who can do that, but I, personally, don’t have that level of focus with this now.

Exhausting is honestly the best word to describe arcane right now. Exhausting for the rotation, exhausting for the mechanics of the fights, exhausting to constantly provide feedback to brick walls.

13

It would still be a ramping up to 40% damage buff on its own that caused a rotation change for the next 5-6 spells after using it so thats inaccurate.

The duration of radiant spark doesnt matter, it does 0 damage, its duration increase is only valuable if you press a defensive during its duration or have 0% haste, it has literally nothing to do with matching touch of the magi’s duration.

14

Radiant Spark is and always has been arcane damage. Just because it’s not purple, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an arcane visual. In fact, it’s pretty darn close to the same color blue that our rune of power is… which is absolutely arcane. Not to mention Arcane Intellect, which is blue.

I didn’t catch this complaint the first time, but as Manather points out, Radiant Spark could last 4 hours on a target and it won’t increase the damage it does at all. (okay, technically it’d probably do less if it lasted longer because it’s X damage over Y seconds, not X damage per second. Even still, the damage that the ability does on its own is not the point)

Radiant Spark lasts longer as quality of life so we have some breathing room. Touch of the Magi now lasts 12 seconds which is, coincidentally, exactly how long Arcane Surge lasts (before the new set bonus comes into play). The change was so that our cooldowns line up better.

If they’re going that route, I’m honestly surprised they didn’t make Radiant Spark a 45 second cooldown or fix Shifting Power so that it would actually affect itself and RS, but hey, at least they did something for once.

15

To pisse off some of us :joy::melting_face:

The funny thing is I used it as frost in SL, but as arcane with all the Arcane Harmony stacking it was unfun.

In DF, RS + As + ToM feels convoluted with 0 flexibility, the only arcane capstone I can digest is Arcane Harmony, but I wish it has less stacks with more dmg per stack.

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16

That’s exactly it. I LOVED Quickening Arcane back in its day because I could burst when I needed to, and mana management was a constraint that meant you paid for messing it up; now with cool-down stacking being the major mechanism for burst Arcane, while it sort of works, feels like every other dps class and has lost its uniqueness.

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17

Right, but it wouldn’t be essentially mandatory nor would it further lock you into the cooldown stacking playstyle. The entire rotation is an house of cards, a gimmick. All of those spells live or die together. Suggesting otherwise is what’s inaccurate.

Of course it matters. The increase in duration may just be a minor QoL change for more experienced and skilled players but for the average player it can make the difference between pulling off the rotation successfully and screwing up the end. But if you really think Blizz didn’t intentionally sync it with TotM because they literally have no idea how the spec functions you’re giving them way too much credit. I know that, you know that, they don’t.

They’re not even trying at this point and really they’ve been phoning it in as far as Arcane is concerned since BfA. None of their tuning passes or hotfixes make any sense nor do they address the core issues with the spec and, for the most part, aren’t even borne out by the numbers.

The fact that it deals Arcane damage is completely arbitrary. Arcane damage has always been their go to when they can’t think of what school a spell should be.

The color isn’t even my primary concern but since you brought it up, it’s a blue color unique to the Kyrian and it didn’t exist in the game before they were introduced. I don’t want to get in the weeds of this on the color but RoP is not blue and has never been blue, it’s a bright white that turns light purple at the edges (like Mace Windu’s lightsaber). In fact the only blue color associated with mages, besides AI (which I personally haven’t used in ages, not since the Dalaran Brilliance glyph came out), is the teal hue around the hands when casting the teleport and portal spells, what used to be the default animation for all arcane spells before the graphics update in Legion. The Kyrian blue is nothing like that.

My biggest problem with the visuals for RS is that it’s just two blue swirlies that resolve themselves into the Kyrian sigil over the target. Again, nothing to do with Arcane thematically and very obviously just a copy and paste job from SL. It feels like a placeholder and sticks out like a sore thumb, just like Shifting Power. If I was Blizzard I really wouldn’t want mementos of the worst expansion in the history of the game (to say nothing of the contentiousness of covenants) to stick around as capstone talents, no less, but I guess they really just don’t give a :poop:.

I may be alone in this, though I suspect I am not, but just seeing these spells triggers me not only because I absolutely hated SL but also because it’s a constant reminder that the devs just don’t care. It may be a small thing in the grand scheme of things but it rankles.

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18

This interation is dump AF tbh
Why arcane need to press 5 to 7 buttons on a specific sequence to do the same damage as evoker for example, that press 3 buttons?

Or a DH that press 1 LMAO

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19

tl;dr bored mages fight about colors and spell identity

Alright, you got me on the colors of RoP. It’s purple and white, but to me it does give off the illusion of being a bit blue to me. I’ll concede that point to you (the spell icon is blue and I am apparently easily duped).

However, Blue is still Arcane’s secondary color (behind the obvious purple). To say that only Arcane Intellect and the color of our hands when casting TP / Ports are the only blue spells is just not correct. So I actually made two lists for you here.

Spells where Blue is the primary or only color (not counting the color of our hands when we cast it):

  • Invisibility
  • Greater Invisibility
  • Presence of Mind
  • Arcane Intellect
  • Evocation
  • Remove Curse
  • Spellsteal

Spells where Blue is either a secondary color or highly represented:

  • Arcane Barrage
  • Arcane Orb
  • Arcane Surge
  • Portal Casting Animation (not just the hands) as well as most, if not all, in-game portals
  • Conjure Refreshment

Also, Radiant Spark is just about the same shade of light blue as our hands when we cast portals (and other various spells that don’t have a purple or otherwise noteworthy color).

The lore of mages is that they learn spells. The Kyrian taught them a very specific spell that has their symbol on it. It’s the right colors. It does the right damage type. But because it’s Kyrian it’s somehow not a valid arcane spell? If Touch of the Magi was renamed to Touch of Khadgar and every time you cast it, Khadgar whispered you a terrible pun, would it not still be an arcane spell?

Radiant spark doesn’t stick out. Shifting power sticks out. Mirrors of Torment stuck out. Deathborne stuck out. They were all thematic at the time (due to the covenant), but Radiant Spark is a perfectly themed spell, with perfectly themed origins. I honestly wish more spells could be themed or named after different mages / cultures in the game. Besides, it’s so much more thematic than having a purple “Arcane Spark” that just puts a few concentric circles on the target.

20

Lmao!

This… this is something I didn’t know I wanted but now I do! I thought having Aluneth whisper in my ear was nice, but Dhadgar!? Ooof! :drooling_face: :joy:

That’s a fair point. I guess I’ve always appreciated a clean palette with everything neatly color coded in the same spectrum. But that’s probably just my OCD, lol. It was nice when Priests had race specific spells, wish they hadn’t removed them. If anything they should have expanded on it and extended it to Paladins too.