Arcane surge needs better synergi with talents and higher base dmg to be worthwhile - or scale 1000% with mana…and a lot lower cooldown.
This is how it looks on my lvl 25 mage:
Arcane Surge
30 yr range, instant cast, consumes all your mana
95-111 arcane dmg
Increased by up to 300% - based on remaining mana
2 min cd
I tried using it in some situations…and it hits like a wet noodle - even with full mana. Yey 400 instant dmg just emptied my mana bar! That’s because the base dmg is so low - even 300% ekstra of nothing is still nothing…
Then I thought - hey - maybe it’s because it has great synergi with clearcasting granting the dmg buff to the spell, giving a little mana regen and not loosing all my mana…but no. No synergy…
And the regen is too little to make up for it. Had it been 1500% like evocation it would have been another story. The 300% for 8 seconds sounds like a lot - but really it gives like max 10% mana back (if you’re not casting).
But what if we compare it to other other spells currently popping off… starsurge (low mana cost, high dmg, 6 sec cooldown, better range)…wind serpents lightning strike…penance …Forget the above…just remove the glyph.
Every class has trashy runes. Warlock has everlasting affliction which is VERY situational and demonic pact which is rarely useful. I would argue that both of these are worse than arcane surge.
Only use I see for everlasting is some very niche shadow bolt volley build that is only slightly useful when clearing some strong, mass trash and demo pact only useful when you are something like 60 and the raid brings a single warlock with a lot of spelldmg along just for this proc.
Yea, Arcane Surge is a completely useless rune as of right now. The only use it could have is in WSG, with Berserking and stacking 1 or 2 arcane blasts to boost its dmg. Then again, its WSG and dmg taken is reduced by 25%, not to mention it has 2 min CD, and you have to be full bis gear and hope for it to crit to oneshot someone. It has the potential to scale though, even next phase. There could be some fun build with arcane power + PoM, so something like Arcane Power + AB cast + PoM AB + Arcane Surge. Also the mana regen will scale with level, so it wouldn’t be THAT bad at 60, but I don’t think all of this will be enough to make it viable.
Sadly they made one of the coolest lookings spells in SoD also one of the worst.
It’s only semi-usable with sheeping → arcane blast (x2 if possible) and just send it hoping for a crit. It’s decent to kill unsuspecting people in group pvp though, you just need to evocate or get a restoration buff in BG to offset the huge negative. The lose all mana aspect effectively kills it atm. It makes it unfun to use.
It also feels like a last resort spell, however you need to use it at 80%+ mana for it to deal any damage. It can only crit for a decent amount of damage if you stack it with arcane blast also, meaning you can’t really use mana on fireblast/poly/manashield etc. Else it just becomes an arcane blast that makes you lose all mana (or even a weaker version when lowish on mana).
Clearly it’s a less damage, shorter range, drains all you mana in the process, 24 sec longer CD, no way to boost with talents/scale; Mage version of Starsurge. Has to be troll by Blizzard ^^
Even if not it is still a decent spell. As I said not all runes are great. you have living bomb, arcane blast, burnout, living flame and ice lance will be great next phase. i dont understand the cooldown though, as it burns all your mana so why have a cd on it at all?
starsurge is broken op no sane person argues it isnt, so you probably shouldnt compare your spelld to that. starsurge and hunters in general need a nerf, dont know if it will happen or not though.
Agreed, but I do understand a “full DPS class” (atleast talent wise) beeing annoyed that a “similar” spell is in the game currently wrecking havoc, by a hybrid with a much broader toolkit to start with.
Aren’t you the guy who wakes up every day to spam a copy generated comment on every topic about Living Flame, wanting to get it unlocked so he can fanboy to his favorite streamers ? Can you stop hating every post just because you hate that you don’t like the game, but you’re addicted to it ?
Then it is my fault, it was some other guy spamming every day each post about Living Flame, and he was also a orc warlock with his nickname starting with J.
Dude, you seem to have no clue.
It’s a SINGLE TARGET spell that can crit up to 1k+. However, it’s still absolutely trash due to how difficult it is to scale the damage (arcane blasts) and losing all mana. If you want a warlock comparison it would be similar to a Chaos Bolt (with the rain of fire debuff), however you’d have a 2min cd, have to stack rain of fire at least twice to do decent damage and lose all mana each cast.
Also, any time you’re below 50% mana it would do the same damage as your incinerate so why cast Chaos Bolt (Arcane Surge) instead of Arcane Blast (Incinerate) then? Too much setup for minor payoff and huge risk of being a target dummy if it doesn’t burst them by surprise (and it’s not really a surprise if the mage tries to stack Arcane Blasts on you).
in WSG becuase of the 20% damage reduction buff all have gotten
arcane surge is just trash
even the classic 3min mage is gonna be nerfed
atleast in world pvp people you can arcane blast > arcane surge
but even if it can 2shot people (sometimes)
it is a overall useless rune
and that WSG shadow change but people has found out just nerfed it insane much and specific that one compare to others it feels worse on
i am unable to kill a lower geared priest in WSG with it
while i am able to kill a priest in world pvp with about same HP
meanwhile other classes like warlock´s chaos bolt
or druid´s starsurge feels like just better version of arcane surge in some ways
i get the point of arcane surge but doing this WSG buff really ruined it alot
the point is basically: trade all your mana for get that kill on a like 30-40% target like a enemy flag carry
but even that it fails at now becuase of that buff on damage taken for all
if i would rework it
i think the damage should not be based on how much % mana left but the amount in numbers becuase currently it does not matter if you have 1000 mana or 10k mana on the damage buff from how much mana you have left becuase it is % based
and instead of give that mana regen buff after used it should be reworked to maybe regen all the mana you used on arcane surge back over time instead of just some of it
its fine if that buff last longer/slower mana regen than the current one but ones that buff is done you should have gotten all the mana back you used on arcane surge specific
so if you used it at 70% mana
it should give 70% mana back but over like 20 sec.
chaos bolt hits 1k if you lake of fire and incinerate before. and crit too. assuming you re bis geared.
what i agree with is that they should remove arcane surges cd. that way you could stack its regen with evocation and do another one. might be heavilty abused then, since you could mana potion, and evocation, but it still would be less broken than starsurge.
i genuinely thought its an aoe bomb, since i never actually seen it in use.