This text is about how arcane mage suck.
No no no, I don’t mean arcane mage have low dps or bad in PvP or something. I want to say that the gameplay is like… “find 10 seconds at use this 10 seconds” . For real, have anybody seen arcane mage with high dps at percentage of damage done with arcane blast lower than 80%? Ok, may be 79%… but it doesn’t matter and you know what I mean.
Arcane mage has to press only the one button. Not realy the one, but in overall. 4…3…potion, percast, 2…1…, charge up, rune , AP, trinket and…AB,AB,AB,AB… Fun? Just to buff myself I need about 4-5 seconds.
But let’s return in the times of Pandaria…
Arcane mage in Pandaria
Rune of Power - two runes of power available at the time, they were without cd and placeable eveythere… like blizzard or flamestrike spell. It was fun to forsee where you want to stand in the next 30-60 seconds and place the rune where… at the same time not forgeting about DPS. Uptime possible 100% of the fight.
Nether Tempest - castable on multiple targets, maintaining was not easy but the output was amazing. It was fun in Siege of Ogrimmar, at the trinity or shamans or garrosh. Having about 3 Nether tempest on the bosses and doing a normal arcane rotation trying to stand in rune of power at the same time.
Arcane power without GCD - just makes the gameplay of arcane not so boring as it is right now.
Mastery - the best thing. More mana you have, more damage you deal, with any arcane spell. Real mana management. Player had to keep mana as full as only possible, especially at the burn phase. Going under 90% of mana while burning meant the loss of DPS. What do WE have now, similar azerith perk… but only for “the button”.
Arcane missiles - every proc of it was like blessing of the god, especially at the burn phase. Huge DPS boosted from the mastery if the mana-pull is high, 0 cost of mana (that was boosting the next spell, cos of regeneration of mana pull), with cast time of the superman. That was fun! 3 stacks of proc… or 2? Anyway more than one.
And I am not talking about timewalk etc.
Arcane mage now.
Rune of power - player don’t need to take care about the placemant of the rune. Just sh@t the rune under himself. CD 40 seconds, 10 seconds lifetime, so without the rune or Arcane Power it doesn’t matter if you press the buttons or not, dps will be around zero. The only thing you have to do, (wisely) find this 10 seconds, sh@t the rune out and keep pressing “the button”. And don’t forget to have enought mana for the next 10 seconds.
Nether Tempest - boring. It is just boring. You can have only one at the time. I am not talking about -> it is not even scaleable from mastery… But it is just to simple to have only ONE bomb on the fights against 2-3-4 bosses with some adds.
Arcane power and charge up on the global CD. It is like you pushing “run forward” and your hero starts to move only after 1 second.
Arcane missiles - boring animation, boring damage, boring cast time, only one stack of clearcasting. Why it is even castable at any time once again, why do you came back at the time of BC? It was in BC, that every mage could cast arcane missile at any time. But wait a moment, how much mages was playing PvE at BC? Right, about 0? I assume, that after the glory of the Legion expansion (as some sort of copy of BC), someone was trying to get some parts of an old BC arcane mage out of the grave and resurrect as a sort of something new? No way. Arcane mage in BC was the …“suckiest” mage ever and I really can’t decide, is BC arcane mage better than BfA arcane mage? I think not, we still have nether tempest in BfA, there was no nether tempest in BC.
All DPS spells except AB are so bad, it is like someone really wanted arcane mage players to press only “the button”… and to be sure, that it happens, blizzards redesigned mastery… it simply buffs the damage of AB. Great work. If you have mastery, then anything you cast that doesn’t have name “arcane blast - the button” lowers you DPS. Mana management? Forget it, just cast AB till you out of fuel and cast evocation, after it keep casting 4 AB + Barrage rotation and some misseles between. 80 AB against 6-10 Missiles for a 3-5 minutes fight.
If I compare how difficult and interesting arcane mage was and how…simple(this word doesn’t really describe the level of stupidity someone needs not to manage the gameplay of bfa arcane mage) the arcane mage is now, then I need to say, there is nothing to compare. It is like fight against the boss in compare to DPS-testing on the dummy in the Iron Forge, difference in difficulty is huge.
I have only two questions.
First. Why did you do what? It is common, that the world needs to have something new. And it is right. I assume you have someone like… designer of mage or of arcane mage gameplay. And his job was to redesign arcane mage in such matter, that it could look like something new. I am 100% sure, that the designer of arcane mage in pandaria and the designer of arcane mage after that are different persons. Because on the one hand we have a perfect mage as a result of the hard work, on the other hand the have BfA arcane mage as the result of the work of designer, who recently worked at catepillar as a designer of bulldozers. “Hey Bob, we have a deadline tomorrow and arcane mage is not done yet, cos our acrane expert gone to make Wildstar, could you please take care of it?” … “sure, what I have to do?”. … “it’s easy, just look at the past years and mix some sh@t, so our manager wouldn’t bother us with his deadlines” . I know you will not confess it, but I also want you to know, that players are not stupid. May be you don’t need to change anything if it is good?
Second question. Did you intentionally make arcane mage so pathetic? This could explane something. Like “we rotate classes and intentionally make some of them pathetic in order to change them in the next expantion, so we could say… LOOK MORTALS, WE DID A GREAT JOB AND MADE ARCANE PERFECT!” …again.
I hope I am not alone. Again as I said, it is not about low DPS or something in that way. It is about “the button”.
Best regard,
Some arcane mage.
No wonder that dot was brutally nerfed in WoD.