8.1 has landed on Arcane Mage

Classes Mage
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8.1 has landed, and it’s total and complete bs for Arcane.

But first:

Fixed pathing issues that could cause some spells such as Frozen Orb to become stuck.

Thank you Blizzard & Mage Design Team/Dev! This is Very Good! Arcane/Frost Orb is working better, and looks like Blink too, but need more testing.

Official patch notes are decieving, and do not include Arcane Pummeling nerf.

This nerf did happen, and Arcane Pummeling now only boost Clearcasted missiles, and very slightly boosts chance to proc Clearcasting.

To test this change, I did 10 full mana bars with and without 3 x Arcane Pummeling traits stacked.

3 x Arcane Pummeling, for 10 mana bars from 100% to 0 gave - 5, 4, 5, 6, 4, 3, 3, 5, 7, 3 Clearcasting procs. 4.5 on average.

No Arcane Pummeling at all, for same 10 mana bars from 100% to 0 gave - 6, 5, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 5, 3, 3 Clearcasting procs. 4.1 on average.

So the difference is roughly 10%. Clearcasting proc chance doesn’t stack with more traits.

And on top of that, in last hotfix:

The following Azerite Traits are reduced to 50% effectiveness when engaged in combat with enemy players:
Mage - Arcane Pummeling, Flash Freeze, Blaster Master, WildFire

So this trait was only usable in PvP, it got nerfed once, and now nerfed a second time in damage and maybe also a chance to proc since it states “reduced to 50% effectiveness”. Wow, this is mind bogglingly BAD.

We have 3 new BUGS! Yeah! How exiting is to play a spec that’s constantly bugged?! It enriches non-enjoyable mess of a spec with so much more of non-enjoyment!

1. Time Anomaly doesn’t give Arcane Charges on proc.
Time anomaly fixed in Patch 8.1 Hotfixes for December 19th
How to reproduce:

  • Select Time Anomaly talent.
  • Drop all charges and wait for proc.
  • You’ll see animation and you’ll get 0 Arcane Charges.

2. Clearcasting works only for first channel of 2-3 stacks. 2nd and 3rd channel are without Clearcasting bonuses.
Clearcasting / Arcane Empowermen bug also fixed in December 19th hotfix, but not included in patch notes.
How to reproduce:

  • Select Arcane Empowerment PvP talent and Amplification talent, to stack Clearcasting and give additional wave to Clearcasted missiles.
  • Get 2-3 clearcasting procs.
  • Channel first, it’ll have 6 waves and channel will be fast.
  • 2nd and 3rd will have 5 waves with slow channel - no Clearcasting bonus applied to them.
  • You can also see difference in damage if you equip Arcane Pummeling trait.

2.5 Charged Up bug is still not fixed, and happens more often now.
Bug: Sometimes Charged Up (and Time Anomaly proc when it worked) give only 3 charges instead of 4. It happens due to out of combat decay of Arcane Charges. Decay timer overlaps with Charged Up (Time Anomaly proc) and 4th charge drops in a matter of milliseconds, so you get only 3.

It rarely happens in Raids and dungeons. But very often in Open World. In 8.1 it started to happen even more often.

3. Brain Storm trait now generate Arcane Charges, but it doesn’t proc Rule of Threes.

Slipstream + Clearcasting bug is still not fixed.

There is no improvements so many Arcane mages were asking for, like:

  • Arcane Power anti-synergy with Clearcasting. Arcane Power shouldn’t work against Clearcasting procs.
  • Clearcasting should be able stack 3 times baseline.
  • Remove GCD from Arcane Power or Charged Up.
  • Change damage distribution of spells, make AM and Barrage stronger baseline.
  • Add abilities baseline - Supernova / Arcane Orb / Nether Tempest (and buff it’s damage)
  • Change Mastery so it works with all spells.
  • Finish rework of this spec…

Only new boring trait and bunch of HUGE nerfs. WTF?!

All mages got a new meta (it sure looks that way) - Quick Thinking - Your instant cast damaging spells heal you for XXX

This heal is very good, even when stacked only 2 times. 2 of these + Azerite Fortification / Resounding Protection is very FUN, and it sure is going to get Mana Shield treatment very soon.

PvE game-play didn’t change at all - still 1 button spam and nothing else matters.
PvP game-play is a mess even more than it was before patch.

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Lame for all those affected! Luckily not what I use as it was garbage for PvE? So guessing this is a big hit on PvP? (I’m not a pvper on mage)

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That’s the thing. Arcane Pummeling was a VERY weak trait in PvE. Why it was nerfed in the first place? - no even one half-reasonable idea.

It was somewhat good only in PvP. But it’s main appeal was that it gave option of something else that is not “spam Arcane Blast” game-play. This is what was nerfed first. Then on top of that it was nerfed additionally in PvP damage, and proc chance possibly too.

In PvE nothing changed, as GS / DitB / CoA / AotT / LM are still BiS - nothing new, just same 1-button spam.

New trait Equipoise is even worse than new version of Arcane Pummeling.

For AoE - same AE->ABarr, but at least here Arcane can help healers in M+ a lot, by having Quick Thinking trait and drop self-heals with each instant cast. Until nerfed ofc.

For PvP, so far it looks like Battlefield Focus / Precision and DitB is a way to go. So much for promises that “Spec specific traits are going to be significantly better than general traits”. I guess this design direction skipped Arcane PvP.

Since Arcane is getting only nerfs fast - we stuck with this boring and non-enjoyable mess for many months. $#!7

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Where did they say that?

It would be nice if they actually said that, because all of our specs have underpowered spec traits.

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Ahahahahahaha… /cry

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In interview with developers, I don’t remember which one exactly, but it probably was one of the content creators interview with Devs, Blizzcon maybe… sry, I don’t want to re-watch them all to find it. I know it’s not really helpful, but quick googling didn’t help.

Discussion was about traits and reforging, and reply was - general traits give less performance but you don’t have to reforge when switching specs, and spec specific traits give better performance.

Anyway, while I was googling, I found two interesting pieces.

From Forbes Interview with Ion Hazzikostas:

I think the more often we can have those choices be about, what do I enjoy the most? What makes me feel more powerful, and give me the freedom of movement or action that I prefer? That’s actually a much cooler space for item decisions to live in. So we actually want to make more Azerite traits of that type.

From Reddit AMA with Ion Hazzikostas

While the generic traits are deliberately fairly straightforward, some of the spec-specific ones are indeed too passive, or interact awkwardly with spec rotations. We’ll be retiring some of those in an upcoming patch and adding better replacements to the pool. And of course we’ll be adding all-new Azerite traits on new tiers of gear from upcoming content as the expansion continues. Again, tuning is a big part of the current problem. If you look at a guide and most of the recommended traits for your spec are various flavors of “proc damage on your target” or “proc a buff on yourself” then yeah, that’s really underwhelming – no argument there. But there are dozens of traits out there with deep interactions on par with Legion legendaries, old set bonuses, or gold-border Artifact traits, such as interactions between abilities or resource generation in ways that vary rotations, talent selection, stat priority, and so forth. The problem is that they’re just mostly too weak to feel worth using right now. But we can fix that.

With this, we got:

  • Trait that changed game-play, gave alternative to “AB spam”, is nerfed and don’t do that anymore.
  • New trait that just adds small passive damage boost and then cuts 13700 mana AB by 190, passively and without damage boost, and currently the worst spec specific trait.

I can’t understand how those changes/addition make any sense in the context of what was said.

Btw, Quick Thinking is already nerfed in PvP - it heals for 50% max in PvP. Done and dusted rather quickly.

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Pretty sure they just hate mages.

The state of all three specs is outright laughable.

Whilst fire/frost have glaring issues with simple fixes, arcane needs a complete rework, never mind a rebalancing of the current traits.

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Yeah, sure feels like it. But state was laughable for me in 8.0. Now it’s frustrating and antagonizing.

That’s what is the most frustrating - fixes are simple. Even for Arcane. But instead of making them, Devs are just keep doing something else, so to say.

Yes, rework would be great, but I don’t believe in a slightest that anything that big is going to happen till next expansion. Current rework of Arcane was started and never finished.

But it doesn’t mean, that there is nothing to be done to make it better, or those changes/fixes are somehow complex.

Arcane Power shouldn’t work against Clearcasting procs. Really simple change. Basically a number tunning.

Clearcasting should be able stack 3 times baseline. The only hard part is to change PvP talent a bit, because part of it goes to baseline.

Remove GCD from Arcane Power or Charged Up. Nothing that’s not already happening.

Change Mastery so it works with all spells. Again, number tunning level of change, and with this change the other one could resolve itself - Change damage distribution of spells, make AM and Barrage stronger baseline.

Revert all changes to Arcane Pummeling. Give us back the only trait that gives real option of customizing game-play. Copy/paste level.

Change Equipoise into something more interesting, like:

  • Bigger damage buff when above 70% mana, and 33-50% chance to generate second Arcane Charge when below 70% but without damage buff.
  • Or bigger damage buff when above 70% mana, and +% chance for Clearcasting when below.
  • Or make it work with both AB and AM.

With those changes Arcane will have a flow and can be a lot more flexible in customization of how you want to play it. Just like in interview:

what do I enjoy the most? What makes me feel more powerful, and give me the freedom of movement or action that I prefer? That’s actually a much cooler space for item decisions to live in.

I think that would have made a solid foundation for a spec to build upon with new Azerite traits over the course of the expansion. And it would still be just as simple, if that is what Devs want in Arcane design.

Right now, Arcane has weak foundation with lack of synergy or any real option to customize/change game-play, and cut down and boring traits on top of it. Really bad, frustrating and not enjoyable.

Mage already:

  • has longest interrupt CD (if I’m not mistaken)
  • the ONLY class without self-heals
  • has 5 min CD on a disabling and dispellable difensive
  • has the worst CC in game, with cast time, heals enemy and breaks just from looking at it (the only reason it works is because it’s on separate DR)

As Arcane:

  • only one school
  • no options to customize game-play
  • every single spec specific trait is nerfed in PvP (tbh, dunno, maybe it’s the same for other specs)
  • bad damage

How Mage class Devs think any of that is interesting, engaging or enjoyable in any way - I have no idea. But more importantly - why do they make changes they did, instead of really simple fixes and building/improving on top of it - only bad words come to mind…

Edit 1:

We have 2 new BUGS! Yeah! How exiting is to play a spec that’s constantly bugged?! It enriches non-enjoyable mess of a spec with so much more of non-enjoyment!

Time Anomaly doesn’t give Arcane Charges on proc.
How to reproduce:

  • Select Time Anomaly talent.
  • Drop all charges and wait for proc.
  • You’ll see animation and you’ll get 0 Arcane Charges.

Clearcasting works only for first channel of 2-3 stacks. 2nd and 3rd channel without clearcasting bonuses.
How to reproduce:

  • Select Arcane Empowerment PvP talent and Amplification talent, to stack Clearcasting and give additional wave to Clearcasted missiles.
  • Get 2-3 clearcasting procs.
  • Channel first, it’ll have 6 waves and channel will be fast.
  • 2nd and 3rd will have 5 waves with slow channel - no Clearcasting bonus applied to them.
  • You can also see difference in damage if you equip Arcane Pummeling trait.

Charged Up bug is still not fixed, and happens more often now.
Bug: Sometimes Charged Up (and Time Anomaly proc when it worked) give only 3 charges instead of 4. It happens due to out of combat decay of Arcane Charges. Decay timer overlaps with Charged Up (Time Anomaly proc) and 4th charge drops in a matter of milliseconds, so you get only 3.

It rarely happens in Raids and dungeons. But very often in Open World. In 8.1 it started to happen even more often.

I really hope those bugs will be fixed fast.

Edit 2:

Thank you Blizzard! Time anomaly fixed in Patch 8.1 Hotfixes for December 19th
Clearcasting / Arcane Empowermen bug also fixed, but not included in patch notes.

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