Arcane mage changes are welcomed massively. They work so well. Cuts down all the faffing with the opener.
However, i have noticed there are “choices” to be made with soulbind conduits that reduce the cooldown of Arcane Power. Evocation retains it’s 1.5 min cooldown and Arcane Power has been moved to 2 minutes now. This does not line up, and it kinda needs to or the burn/conserve aspects of Arcane are not there. It’s clunky. The only option will be to choose the thing that reduces the cooldown of Arcane Power to 1.5mims. If something was added to increase the cooldown of evocation that would be somewhat okay but if both options are available the reduction on AP is a no brainer. So either that reduction option needs to go, because it’s too mandatory, or line up the cooldowns in some other way.
Does anyone else see this problem?
The Touch of the Magi changes and the new talents are top notch. Baking Rune of Power and Charged up into 2 other cooldowns feels amazing. And giving Arcane displacement back with the Master of Time talent is a good idea. I actually don’t mind that displacement has gone now.
I also like the move to make Mirror Images a defensive. It makes sense thematically that it’s there to confuse enemies to reduce the amount of damage you take. It feels great not having it as a DPS cooldown because we all know the GCD changes really screwed Arcane over and in early alpha it was beyond a joke.
It’s nice to see the relevant changes being made when there is a problem. I really hope numbers are in Arcane’s favour now for Shadowlands so I can go back to maining an Arcane mage.
It’s ActiBlizz way, replacing existing problem with another problem, and not solving the original problem in the first place. Didn’t really expect them to do ANYTHING but screw us, so wasn’t surprised. What DID surprise me was that they did the one step in the right direction by kinda baking Rune into AP, just a lot more steps to go. And yes, the CDs not quite lining up were noticed by people on Wowhead here https://www.wowhead.com/news=317410/blizzard-on-arcane-mage-changes-in-shadowlands-changes-to-address-talents-and-gc#comments. Probs shouldn’t quote myself - bad form, that - but just cba to write this all over again xd
Deathborne > AP > Touch = STILL GCD BLOAT . Why is Touch active cast again? So every 45s we have something to buff AP/Rune even more? Don’t those guys see this sort of thing gets exponential synergy with other stackable cooldowns? Oh wait, they don’t…
Changing Mirrors to more of a defensive CD is kinda overkill. We have Block & Greater Invis already. The clones not dealing uber damage is good though.
Barrage still sucks, 15% per target isn’t anywhere NEAR to what it should do . Looks like we are still going to be the one caster spec in which no spell is better than casting a spell. Because Barrage’s dmg is so low, it’s sometimes better to wait 1-2 seconds for mana and Blast some more. Hint: Legion Resonance increased damage by 25 % per charge. And there was that Aluneth trait which made Barrage explode at more than 2 targets, hitting EVERYTHING in 10y radius for decent damage. Should be baseline so we have more things to do in AoE situations than spam AE until we can’t sustain this mana burn anymore. This would also help with Barrage being effectively capped at 4 targets and therefore sucking. Because AoE caps are just dumb, and do not solve the problem that caused them to be introduced in the first place - that massive pulls are not dangerous, just tedious and requiring grand AoE/cleave burst.
2m CD on 10-15s ability is still BS. NO other 2m CD is shorter than 20s. Arcane Power was made to work on 15s duration/90s cooldown. No more, not less . As long as Rune is on 40s recharge and Touch on 45s cd, it’s going to cause CD stacking problems, and come on, these things were MEANT to be stacked. Otherwise they wouldn’t exist.
And where are Missiles/Clearcasting/whatever they call it changes so we can PEW PEW things more often to have fun & move around? Stacking them to 3 doesn’t help anything if we have to burn entire mana bar to get 3 stacks.
Blizz just did one step forward… after 5 steps back. Good, but not enough. There’s 4 steps more and only then we can call it a day.
Still waiting for AP off GCD and back to 15s duration / 90s cooldown.
Still waiting for Missiles to be available more often than once per 20-25% of mana bar. THEN we can talk about why Slipstream should be baseline.
Still waiting for Barrage to be more than conserve phase charge dump.
Still waiting for the dummies to just cease & desist this idiocy, admit they were wrong (because they were), and reroll the whole thing back to Legion where it WORKED ALREADY BEFORE THEY BROKE IT.
Dude I was mainly agreeing with you. The changes aren’t great, it feels more sideways than forwards. You got issues.
Anyway I hear 9.0 classes are up on ptr, lets try it out.
Edit: just tried it out on ptr and it feels good. I have good level 120/50 gear so my stats are good but missles procs are very regular and it doesn’t feel slow. Mana gems are a nice touch I forgot about, be nice if we could conjure them for healers too.
They don’t have to unless Evoc has a longer cooldown. If it did that would mean you had to sit on AP longer before using it because the whole point of AP is to not care about the mana you spend so you can Evocate back up.
Right now though. You’ll have Evoc sitting for at least 20 seconds to wait for AP to come back up (providing all things go well). Seems kinda silly, why not just put them on the same amount of time like it is now.
Yeah, the new Rune change is welcomed with the GCD bloat but I think the duration of the rune is a little odd. Where we had 2 runes before one before AP and one after now we just have 1. Not sure how that will work with balancing IF because that’s basically the same as live and right now they’re somewhat equal in most fights. But RoP got a nerf with basically being one charge. I think the RoP duration needs to be increased. Make it a 20 second rune, that would make it last an extra 5 seconds more than AP meaning you have somewhat a similar system to now. It does mean moving is cumbersome though. I’m afraid IF will become the default option because it really isn’t anything you can plan around and is uninteresting.
Those changes and problems you listed in the WoWhead forum are things Blizz should be aware of. I’m not sure they are though.
I do have to say though, Arcane in Legion was when I started to get put off. M+ you’d almost always take the Arcane Barrage Arcane Orb legendary and maybe the Time Warp one. The numbers weren’t great either. Arcane was bottom tier of the mages throughout the expansion. It’s been the forgotten spec since forever. Not many play it so not many care to point these problems out.
I think the WoD iteration of Arcane was great. A few minor tweaks would have been good but the rework in Legion was bad imo.
Depending on how strong the Conduit wil be, that reduces the CD of AP through Arcane Missiles atleast holding back on Evoc can probably be avoided without a big problem (atleast with a higher rank).
And it would lead to RoP scaling through the Conduit unlike the other options.
But then it will still depend of rng for how many clearcasting procs you’ll get.
Hey people, do you think the Touch of the Magi should be instant cast with GCD? On retail i play charged up in arenas to get charges in opener, but with this version on ptr there’s posibility of getting interrupted and not being able to get charges. Thoughts?
Touch should never ever be active. We don’t need MORE ST boosts, and the way it works in PTR means “one more GCD to your burst opener for big numbers”. We need reliable cleave that is NOT on long CD, and old Unstable Magic+Aluneth version of Touch would be easiest way to get it: lower damage, higher frequency, averages to decent on 1+ targets.
Baking Charged Up functionality into Touch was kinda bad move. There might be a situation in which you want ONE of these things, but not the other. And now you wouldn’t have a choice what to do, it’s been decided already, because “you think you know, but you don’t”. And the worst part? The guys who made this decision were, to put it mildly, not the brightest lightbulbs around. CU should be off GCD, end of story.
It really does feel clunky with touch, maybe if it did a big chunk of ST dmg upfront it’d feel better.
Right now if you press it before AP you miss a gcd to put dmg into it when you press AP. If you press it after AP you miss a gcd to blast the boss. I know it’s more dmg either way but it feels bad not to be smashing dmg spells into the boss during a burn.
Old rune of power would be perfect for those 8 sec burns for it too
Because this passive was WORKING QUITE WELL and the current PTR Touch+Echo means you get decent damage once per 45 seconds and it’s bound to Touch on target AND it’s pretty much another ST boost because 125% dmg done for 8 seconds. I will take boring and working over “new and exciting” crap any day.
Unstable Magic was a ST boost as well, just a more consistent one instead of a cooldown. And no, UM and aluneth/bfa TotM are badly designed passives that should’ve never existed.
Dealing to AOE or ST damage should ALWAYS be a player decision, not some random proc. It’s very similar to the damage proc corruptions, where you press Frost Nova/DB/Poly and it procs Twilight Devastation, Gushing Wound, etc and breaks your CC.
BASICALLY you should never randomly deal AOE damage while doing ST rotation, that should be a player choice.
Dunno I hate the new ignite lol but ye have on demand burst cleave damage is ideal for a spec that lacked it and 45secs is not a long cd by any means. That’s every pack in mythic plus and every add spawn in boss encounters. Also… that lines up with the kyrian spell… and AP with that conduit. Its all coming together.
Look up Havoc DH rotation and please tell me when exactly do they decide whether to deal ST damage or AoE damage. Cuz, y’know, basically all their AoE spells are ALSO ST CDs. No choice involved whatsoever, the priorities are the same whatever you fight. They just get better vs more than 1 target AND do not pay the price of being sucky in either ST or AoE part, like us Arcane mages. Yes it is bad, yes it should be fixed, but it’s unlikely to happen, so meanwhile I’d like to have what they’re having. Because if they can, why can’t we?
Randomness can be reduced by increasing proc chance & decreasing damage accordingly so it averages to stable numbers in the long run, yet not punishing too much if you are unlucky. Think 3.x Elemental Overload - 33% chance for 50% damage, averages to 16,67% extra. I’d prefer something like that instead of 8s cleave every 45s and then back to sucky ST damage or having to go full AoE because everyone else can cleave, just not you.
Other option is tuning Barrage up so it does more than dump charges. But even if it’s buffed to Legion levels, it still does have that butt-dumb low target cap, and dumps our ST damage into trash can…
I honestly didn’t feel that at all, and it’s still leagues away from how it was in legion. I wish they could do something about it, perhaps even increase the number of stacks. I’d also like to see charges back to both missiles and AE.
Arcane is definitely recovering from BfA, but there’s yet much to do.
Sad, isn’t it ? Legion had a much higher proc rate with 3 stacks, and missiles’ damage benefited from charges. Once you reached 5 charges you’d either keep blasting/firing missiles or reset your charges through barrage. It was much more mental.
Except you’re missing out on the RNG part. Yes, DH always deals AOE damage whenever they like it or not, but there is no RNG involved if it’s gonna be AOE or not, so they do still have full control over who they wanna hit.
Beside having a choice, 95% of DHs I’ve met mostly either didn’t give a crap or didn’t pay any attention while mashing their buttons, so they do break my CC anyway .
Hell no! DH is literally designed as a mindless cleave machine…I personally don’t think it’s right to compare mage to DH design, considering our class has been historically known for being one of the best at controlling the battlefield.
If blizz wants to do something, just put some resources into class design and fix things, instead of doing these half-assed lazy bandaids all the time…
This, I agree with! Barrage have always felt like it should be a high point of dealing damage as Arcane, but most expansions it hasn’t delivered.
I had a blast in Legion M+ with how strong Barrage felt and with Mark of Aluneth, nowadays I fall asleep doing M+ as arcane.
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