Can't wait for Arcane 9.0

Where we will have 3 more buttons to press for a burst of damage that will only last for 6 seconds at most, then go on a 3 minute cooldown

and still do less damage than a basic Fire rotation.

Because you know what Arcane needed, more buttons to press!

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Read the post title with excitement, and thenā€¦ xD

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i know i know arcane is flower fae purple spec and all, but arcane power will be on 2min cd and also will generate rune off gcd in one click and duration of arcane power 15sec, and buttons almost the same, so i dont get the drama

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Do you have a time machine and came back from the future with information that a basic fire rotation will do more damage after the tuning and raid opens?

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You can have 45sec mini burst windows or can line it up for add spawn cleave. Arcane is doing very good dmg on beta. Fire is not, as it stands fire is gonna be rare in 9.0.

Also AP is a 2min cd and thereā€™s a conduit that can reduce it.

Also, also Arcane did need more buttons to press, badly.

If you want to press always only 2 buttons, you can reroll DH and delete your mage :slight_smile:

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Well, i am actually excited
Shadowlands is looking really good.

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ā€œBetter than BFAā€ isnā€™t a high bar to set. Still not as good as Legion or Wrath. They broke it, they have to fix it. And itā€™s not some great, praiseworthy effort on their part, itā€™s basic requirement because it was already working well - until they screwed it up.

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kyrian is also a very good choice for arcane. that cd reduction is not all that and only really usefull at the highest end of m+.

the kyrian spark has very high synergy with arcane and its cd lines up with rune of power + touch of the magi which is very nice in a raid setup.

also atleast with kyrian you can swap to frost and have zero issues as night fae is crap for frost mage.

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Alright guys time for some thread necromancy.

9.0 Arcane looks better than 8.3, but doesnā€™t work that much better, and once you get used to new visuals, you notice some glaring holes.

Arcane Missiles got good. So good, in fact, that AM spam is top DPS rotation. Forget Blast, AM is the new black in DPS department. I kid you not, as long as you have mana, short-term AM spam is stronger than AB spam, especially if you have that AM boosting azerite trait. The monkeys in development just couldnā€™t figure how to make procced Missiles better than AB but hard-casted Missiles worse than AB, when multiple solutions were right under their nosesā€¦
8 quite strong ticks per cast on proc is FRICKIN AWESOME. Reminds me of Legion setups & that crazy burst gameplay where you were rewarded for using procs and not ignoring them. You know, like it SHOULD be always, not every 2nd expansion.
The downside is that youā€™re not going to get 3 stacks unless you burn half of your mana or more if RNG doesnā€™t like you. Currently you still get about 1 proc per 20% mana, which combined with more mana-negative rotation means you have to watch the blue bar more than earlier.

Speaking about mana, Arcane Barrage mana return per charge doesnā€™t kick in until 50+, so no mana positivity unless you really ease up on Blasts before dumping charges.

AoE got a bit better, but relies on CDs - 45s Touch and 20s Arcane Orb, unless you pick Reverberate which is better on sustained Explosion spam. Then itā€™s back to ST turret.

ST/AoE divergence is still in. Resonance/Reverberate is a lot better in AE/AB spam, while ST+some AoE from time to time is better done by using Arcane Echo/Orb.

7th talent row is a mess. Time Anomaly: Still exists. Enlightened is Equipoise azerite trait. Still doesnā€™t really compete with Overpowered because OP still has extreme synergy with Rune.

Mobility got a BIG hit as Displacement got axed, Shimmer was nerfed to have 25s recharge (compare THAT to 10s on Fel Rushā€¦), and Slipstream still isnā€™t even approaching usefulness because Missiles donā€™t proc often enough. See the part about roughly 1 proc per 20% mana dumped. Alter Time & Master of Time Blink CD reset shenanigans donā€™t make up for the fact that it still has too long CD and requires GCD to move around.

Until Shadowlands go live, Arcane Power is effectively nerfed as it still lasts 10 seconds but its cooldown went up to 2 minutes from 1:30. 1/12th uptime from 1/9th is a net loss even taking into account that itā€™s not eating 1 gcd anymore.

Obligatory hateful rant about Focus Magic-related idiocy here: It still exists. In Rune of DPS row. Nobody sane will ever take it unless they like hurting their DPS. Especially now, when Rune was kinda baked into AP, ensuring its dominance because itā€™s 1,5 x 1,4 = 210% damage for AP duration. And Touch is storing 50% of it for its duration.

ā€œAll CDs onā€ burst still too strong, sustain still too crappy because rotation is more mana-negative without Rule of 3s so we have to cast Barrage more often.

Frostbolt is meh because Slow is better snare and Fireball does better dps in case of being kicked. Still no AoE snare. Wards that didnā€™t make it to the live game had more purpose as they made us harder to kill with frost/fire damage instead of just 1 more ability that is likely to end up never being used at all. I miss being able to use Cone of Coldā€¦

ā€¦and Blizzard, Flamestrike, or any other form of sustained ranged AoE. Itā€™s dumb having to go into melee range being a squishy cloth caster. And outside mentioned CDs thatā€™s what we have to do. Arcane Orb hits like a truck but 20s CD is a long time compared to say Blade Dance.

And about Wards, someone tell those airheads that in Cataclysm they were merged into Mage Ward, combining Fire/Frost absorb and adding Arcane too, as it makes sense that your character knows how to defend themselves from their own tricks.

Conclusion: 2 steps forward, 1 step backwards. Better than BFA, but this isnā€™t saying much. Still worse than Legion & Wrath incarnations of Arcane. At least now we have a proper proc using gameplay.

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As someone whoā€™s only been playing since BfA, Iā€™m enjoying new Arcane :slight_smile: Opening rotation is definitely a lot more fun. Also the rearranging of arc orb on the talent tree, oh yes <3
Not sure how I feel about the swap to spamming missiles, this was what I didnā€™t really love about the levelling process, it feels significantly more tedious to me than spamming AB for some reasonā€¦ Could be the ā€˜channelā€™ vs the ā€˜cast - blastā€™ feeling. As you say, it is cool though to have a proc you actually use.
The mobility is a little disappointing alright. I guess we canā€™t have everything. Initially thought Iā€™d really miss displacement, but having done a good few M+ since Iā€™ve actually realised how seldom I used it! Havenā€™t really found a regular use for Altered Time yet but am guessing this comes with practiceā€¦ Feels like it should be used at the start of segments you know youā€™re going to be taking a lot of damage e.g. Sister Malady in WM?
Also liking how Iā€™m fairly easily beating BM Hunters in DPS tables right now, imagine!

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Thatā€™s because it is. In Legion spamming Blast before Missiles had a purpose - it was setting up that big bad burst as Charges were buffing Missilesā€™ damage, so then you would blow &$%^ up to Outland. Now itā€™s just ā€œspam this ability until OOM, then regenā€ because short-term itā€™s better, and while leveling you can pretty much always sit and drink so mana is of no concern.

Nice understatement you got there!

ā€¦You mean you didnā€™t Shimmer-Displace-Shimmer-Shimmer when moving around bank/AH/mailbox? How could you? HOW COULD YOU?! All my life was a lie! :smiley:

ā€¦Gotta see it. Too good to be true. Also be prepared that youā€™ll be losing a LOT of DPS in any movement-intensive situation, as itā€™s still BFA for now. We still have no reliable instants or castable while moving spells.

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Fighting against my naturally cranky disposition :stuck_out_tongue:

I guess you could always set it up with an altered time in an elaborate sort of way. But perhaps the convenience one would save in time, one would lose in the expended brain power to do so. Sad panda(ren) :panda_face:

I mean, itā€™s possible they were just bad hunters. But Iā€™ll stick with my statistically-insignificant sample size for now to feel good about my magey ways :smile:

ā€¦but, as a trade-off, we seem to have recovered the various mana patisserie options :pie:

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Suggesting there are good hunters? Well, sure, the dead ones I can agree withā€¦ :smiley:

Donā€™t remind me of it. Had to rewrite food cast/use macro because of this. Stupid, stupid change for changeā€™s sake xd

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Lol. Not that good if they got themselves killed, I guess :sweat_smile:

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Arcane is fine. Better than it ever has been.

If you are casual collecting mounts etc i can agree. If you want to be any competitive doing m+ or raids Arcane will be boring as hell. They did a lot of good changes but there are no good borrowed powers for arcane in SL (and this game is all about borrowed powers) except oneā€¦ Arcane Harmony which forces most boring gameplay ever. Spam missiles.
On top of that they changed that legendary 2 or 3 times which suggest they are not sure how this should work so you can predict they will just nerf this thing to the ground and forget about it.

This is me, Cyndra, but on another mage for this tier.

Iā€™m not casual. I progressed Mythic as Arcane at WR 420ish. Arcane is more than fine in 9.0. Rotation wise its more solid than it ever has been in the recent expansions. Numbers wise I dont care because it will be changed regardless, but even on that front Arcane is quite competitive from what I experienced during Nathria testing.

There is this community misconception that Arcane equals bad in most cases which is not true at all.

Arcane in pre-patch.

So enlighten me, how many Missiles proc you get for dumping 1 mana bar 100-0 in Beta/PTR? More than 4-5? Because currently in the pre-patch it utterly SUCKS to have a proc stackable to 3 and then maybe getting 2 at once if youā€™re not purposefully wasting your mana.

This ā€œ1% chance for 50 mana usedā€ is just BS, too small chance, combined with already insane Blast scaling it makes you GOD OF DPS on procs & CDs and kinda ranged tank, only without tankā€™s toughness and threat when out of procs & CDs. There is a line beyond which being good in burst phase/ramped-up rotation means being trash in conserve phase/starting rotation. Arcane has crossed that line somewhere in BFA pre-patch and is still beyond it.

Also we still lack sustained ranged AoE. This feels bad. Being able to have Orb without sacrificing ST is better than nothing but 20s cd is a lot.

But we have aoe with orb, echo/resonance without ever sacrificing too much ST.
AE is uncapped. Arcane in general is mostly uncapped aoe.

Missiles proc chance is a bit low, I agree, but its proc chance can use some love, it has been suggested in the beta forums.

Us being good during CDs is kinda true. Arcane has good sustained damage Iā€™d say. Better than Frost or Fire. It has semi-bursts every 45 seconds and 1 big damage every 2 mins. This is also true for all classes, most classes do the majority of their damage only in CDs.

All in all, Arcane has improved massively going from 8.3 to 9.0. We have less dead talents, we have a good rotation and we have a ton of defensives.