I am happy guys, that you are putting some tinder in this thread, pls go on.
Its not just arcane that is boring, fire is also tremendously boring, however fire is just better then arcane in all ways. High burst then nothing. The difference is managing fire blast over arcane. Its odd but Frost is actually the most fun to play right now.
Arcane however should be the one that deals the most single target damage and catered towards raids, not just dummy fights. There should be a benefit in having that one mage just play turret. With these mobile fights however there is no usage of an arcane mage hence fire completely overtakes it with frost being a close second in the average player bracket.
Rework Rune of Power into a CD that isn’t stationary or make it amplify your spells in more then just +dmg.
Arcane Missiles is so iconic and so much fun, there is so much potential there - for instance in rune of power it could for example cleave as well.
However a spam of Arcane Blast which almost has no animation is boring.
Give Arcane some love!
And on that note, rework fire as well. 100k opener and then end up hitting like a wet noodle… come on. Fire used to be so much fun due to pyroblast. Sure you reworked combustion into something really useful but that doesn’t mean you have to gimp all the abilities.
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I disagree, I think they need to build on it. The bottom line of the spec is ok imo but the talents let it down too much. Most the viable talents are just do x% more damage.
Bring back 3 stacks of missles, add some viable talents that make you put more buttons on your bars and I’d really love to see a talent to make missles cleave. Bring back some interaction with missles and charges, doesn’t have to be terrible damage with no charges just more when you hit 4 charges. Hell make your char glow when your at 4 charges to show your all charged up. What about a talent that lets you go to 5 charges…
I could go on, idea of arcane is fine they just gutted it without thought when the legion artifact was removed.
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Well. the lack of animation can be a huge advantage in battlegrounds. 
Hey, I think I fairly agree with most observations made here. I think Blizzard needs to make a coherent choice on Arcane’s role. Blizzard wants Arcane to be a purely Solo Target DD… I wouldn’t be mad if Arcane actually had bad AoE dmg… but at least they should make it so having multiple targets increases the ST dmg (just like it’s the case for other specs already).
Let me know what you think of these ideas. (I won’t talk about numbers obviouly, if you think anything I mention is OP it certainly means it needs damage tuning. I’m just talking about mechanics here)
1. Arcane missile.
I think we should add a debuff that would interact with Arcane Missiles to make this spell more fun and more interesting. This debuff would be a “Mark” on targets
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The next time(s) you cast Arcane Missiles, it will hit all the “Marked” targets. The mark could be consumed, or last for X seconds.
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The Mark could be applied by many different spells. Arcane Barrage seems to be the best idea imo. Arcane Blast as well (at 4 or any charges).
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Arcane Orb could be reworked to apply this mark to all targets instead (and possibly do only a reduced % of Arcane Missiles). We’d have to decide whether there’s a limited number of Marks or not.
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Nether Tempest could be reworked around those marks as well, I’m sure we can work something out. (or not?)
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Arcane Explosion (or any replacing spell, because AE sucks honestly) could have a chance to apply the Mark as well. Whatever this AoE Filler Spell is, it should still have a higher chance to proc Arcane Missiles (like it’s already the case with Arcane Explosion).
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There could be a stacking component too. Either increasing the damage, or simply allowing more Arcane Missiles in a row without wasting a Mark.
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All of those ideas would be pure cleave dmg. If instead we made the Arcane Missiles bounce on the additionnal targets and all converge toward the main target, it would make the mechanic more Single Target while still being cool to look at. (Visually speaking it could look like a reversed Nether Tempest. Arcane missiles bounce on targets and go upwards before plummeting on the main target)
For instance, if there’s 1 boss + 4 Marked adds. Casting Arcane Missiles would hit all adds once, and the boss 1+4 times, or something like that
Numbers would have to be tuned correctly but my point is that micromanaging the marks could be more fun.
2. Randomness
When I first tried Time Anomaly I was surprised how fun it was and I thought there was potential there. Sadly, Overpowered being on the same row and the Equipoise trait make it impossible to use.
- I already like that it can proc at literally any time. But if it needs more consistency maybe it could proc each time you reach 4 charges or something like that.
- The tiny Evocation is nice. But the 4 free charges and the tiny burst often trigger at the wrong moments and it’s quite frustrating.
- I think it should instead have a chance to make Arcane Blast, Missiles, or Barrage a greater/improved spell with additionnals effect. You could maybe even lose the buff if you cast the wrong spell (so you’d have to have good reflexes).
- A Greater Arcane Blast could have some AoE components (8m AoE around the target), cost 0 mana, be instant cast (not necessarily all of these)
- A Greater Arcane Missiles could simply fire more missiles (10ish missiles)
- A Greater Arcane Barrage could hit each target twice (and apply 2 “Marks” mentionned above). Restore some mana.
3. Stats
Haste on Arcane Mages is awkward and we shouldn’t try to avoid it because it feels punishing. Mana regen must be managed differently.
- Mana Regen should be tied to Haste. Other classes have their ressource generation increased by haste, why not Mages ?
- It means we’d have to find a new mastery system. There was a time when Mastery added dmg based on your current mana level (just like Equipoise but more smoothly, less punishing if you’re at 65% instead of 70% mana). I think it did the job well.
- But here is the twist! I think the new Time Anomaly I talked about just before could very well be baseline and tied to Mastery.
Having more Mastery could increase the numbers and/or the chances for it to proc.
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Didn’t vanilla have something like “out of all the classes mage hits the hardest” ?
Seems the blizzard of old is truly dead.
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I hope they’ll have enough development time left in 9.0 testing, to actually adress arcane for the next expansion. It’s quite obvious they already gave up on it for BFA, just like demo locks in WoD.
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Arcane needs rework badly and they could do some small things to improve arcane for now. For example Arcane Orb would be nice improvement to aoe dmg but you can’t take it over 60% dmg buff. So just make the Arcane Orb a spell not a talent. They should also change clearcasting to feel rewarding. Dunno… maybe increase Arcane missiles dmg by x% or make it hit 2 targets. For now clearcasting feels like waste of dmg.
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Clearcasting missles do increase dmg, quite a bit actually. They need it to stack like legion though, then arcane has on demand raid mobility.
Clearcasting missiles is loss of dmg unless you have 2 or 3 arcane pummeling traits.
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O in full rotation, didn’t know that. I just meant against normal missles. So its ice lance for frost and clearcast missles for arcane both under preforming… not a good expac for class design is it.
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arcane mage worst spec on EP chart,frost aint much higher
Legion Arcane Mage was actually quite fun once you had the mystic kilty, why did they make so many unnecessary changes? Why is AB the only spell that interacts with our core mechanic?
As I see, I am not alone here, nice. I saw some good ideas, but let me add something too.
Arcane mage has only one two issues atm. Poor cleave and boring “the button” - gameplay. Cleave is not really poor, but arcane mage should completely change azerith traits and talents to do cleave damage, while frost mage or fire doesnt need to do anything. Arcane at this point have to collect gear for ST, for cleave and for AOE, cos of traits.
Back to my ideas. The thing is, class design is about to make class strong in PvE while not making it OP in PvP. Reasonable. So, if some1 says, add cleave to AM, it will became too powerfull in PvP and so on.
So, lets brainstorm a bit. First suggetion is to rework mastery and bind it to mana pull. Like it was in MoP. More mana means more dps, not only for AB but for all arcane spells. That could be way too powerfull in pvp. In this case just burn mages mana could be a sort of counter against arcane mage. Sure there are not much classes who can burn mana… So Just make mana shield consuming more mana per damage taken, that means arcane will be buffed with mastery in pve and nerfed with mana consumption in pvp. Old Blizzard style, arcane is powerfull, but there is the way to counter it.
What is next? NT. NT only for solo target is boring. Let’s think, What we could do? Go back to MoP would make it tooooo strong in pvp especially in big battles. Suggetion. Give NT 3 charges like to fire blast, but with one difference. Each of 3 used CDs should have their own timer, so if I used NT 3 times on seconds 0, 1 and 2, I can use NT again 3 times on seconds 9, 10 and 11 (just as an example). Making NT do targeted AOE damage not just splash in range of landing could also nerf it in pvp while preserving good dps in pve. Reducing from 3 to 2 target is also possible, play with numbers, but do something. As another possibility make 3 NT charges as talent in the same row with a strong PvP talent. That could do arcane mage very vulnerable if arcane decides for strong dps in pvp. I think it is nice idea.
AM. Obviously the absence of proc stacking is annoying. We need at least 2, better 3 stacks. The problem is, in duel or other pvp it will became to the way of nuking the enemy. With reworked mastery binded to mana pull, 3 clearcasted AM with no mana cost and Arcane Power could do serious damage. Not forget about NT and AB with PoM. Here is my idea. Every stack of clearcasting should now just give +4 or +5 missiles while adding cast time. Example : I have 1 stack of clearcast, I can cast 1 AM, that means for example 5 missiles with cast time 3 sec. After that I get 2nd stack of clearcast, that means I still can cast only 1 AM but with 10 missiles in 6 sec consuming 2 stacks of cleacasting. Why do that madness? Clearcast proc wont get lost in pve, arcane mage could hunt 2-3 procs and drop a hell over the raid boss. In pvp all 3 procs of hell could be kicked with one rouge or some1 else making it kinda useless in pvp or hard to realise. Nice?
Barrage is ok as long mastery will buff it with % of mana pull. In this case dropping the charges will make sence, first because Barrage will do real damage, second because of saved mana pull the overall dps will grow up.
Rune of garbage power. The Rune is really powerful. In MoP it was like +20%? And with living time about 40 or 60 sec? It was Just possible to have 100% uptime. But since you done RoP as 40% buff, it is a powerful tool with 10sec. OK. But the boss mechanics punishes very hard. With old runes I could Just place another rune, now I have only 2 charges and certainly I also used Arcane Power and will not cast another rune while AP is active. Solution?
Make it possible to place it anythere the mage need it, not only under the mage. And, make a sort of spell immunity, 10 sec within the rune arcane mage can ignore 1 or 2 spell effect. Example. Mage got 3 procs of cleacasting, has 4 charges, placed the rune, used AP and randomly got punished by stun/silence/mind control, but in the rune he Just ignore the First effect of the spell, not the damage, only the effect, so mage cant Just stand in the rune and in void zone or something totaly ignoring the mechanics. Such rune is hard to realise in pvp, ignoring one spell effect in the rune wont do much, cos there are a lot of CC in PvP.
Orb. I donno. I dont really see it in the game but… As long Orb will be buffed with mastery it could be a good AOE tool. If it became too OP in PvP, just tune a spell a bit. For example by decreasing damage the Orb does to all target after 1st 2nd 3rd Etc. 1st target takes 100%, 2nd 80%, 3rd 60%… Giving to the Orb the passive effect to add NT to the First 3 targets hitted will make it to an interesting spell. But I dont really see Orb as a main spell and wont think much about reworking it.
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I really like your ideas about rune of power and arcane barage. Making barrage do more dmg when you have full mana would feel like you use dps spell not just a button to drop charges. Changing rune of power so it makes you immune to first cc would be nice too. Arcane does pathetic dmg without rune of power - arcane power and 1 cc can destroy your whole burst.
The change i would like to see the most and should be easy to do is… CHANGE ARCANE ORB TO A SPELL NOT A TALENT. Arcane feels a lot better with orb but if you have to choose betwen 60% dmg buff and arcane orb you are forced to take 60% if you want to do dmg. It is just better in both st and aoe.
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I wanna say one thing, Arcane Missile is really Amazing spell. I mean it but the rest isn’t gonna hurt so much. Arcane Missile is what make Arcane Mage so good, but i suggest to use Fire Mage.
Possible way would be remove orb from talents and add it to the spell book. Instead of orb in the talent tree just add pvp spell that replaces arcane orb if chosen. I am thinking about arcane core. If you take arcane core it replaces arcane orb. Arcane core could fly forward as arcane orb, but, instead of hitting everthing on the way it stops in 1 or 2 sec(or ondemand of arcane mage if he hits the arcane core button again) after cast and pulls every player to the center of the core dealing no or low damage but not giving other player to escape.
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