I trying to play arcane, and trying it really hard. Now everyone handle me just like a noob covard just because the spec I would like to play. Very annoying that I couldn’t get an invitation even for a single low level mythic. Heroic raiding also close to imposdible. Playing with arcane is seems to be a shame for others. They call me stupid, noob, and so on…
WHY ARCANE SO INVISIBLE for Blizzard ?
No real tuning. (Almost every class get, but arcane … get nothing)
No real positive suggestions. Hey man, it’s a really great and complex spec! Why articles always miss it?
I feel Blizzard can’t do anything with this spec, but why?
Do you think because only a few play this spec? Give it some positive change please! Sure it will do a job
Don’t let a colour of the game disappear!
Some specs have to be at the bottom so that others can shine and make people feel better about themselves.
Seems to be the way that blizzard wants it to be and it works wonder.
Please do not think at any moment, that arcane is weak. I’m telling you this, because i’ve pushed 18’s with arcane mage. I do agree that arcane, have it’s limitations and that there’s something fundamentally wrong with Combustion.
But this does not mean arcane currently needs a massive overhaul because said nicely. Arcane’s biggest strength is prolonged combat where as fire’s biggest strength is it’s massive AoE damage in a short fight…
Do SD and NW and you will suddenly see the two specs in their strongest and worst environments.
From m0 to m18 i will strongly argue, that arcane is the best and the strongest spec for the average player but once you do m19 and up, arcane falls behind because suddenly the pull pattern for the average dungeon needs to change + the average player does not play like this, and this change is a change where arcane is fundamentally bad, given Arcane barrage’s 5 targets, cap.
I can go into a Q and A about what i mean about this and why argue like i do. But please, arcane needs nothing else than a CC right now and a possibly fine tuned Talent tree. We need that CC baseline and not in a dps row.
I think really that arcane can be strong some situations, but other hand as I mentioned, the way it is treated is more annoying than the real DPS output of class. And seemingly Blizz and wowhead strengthens this ideas with the articles and statistics. Sometimes they write about it like a dead class, sometimes they simply miss this spec from articles. There can be found only a few positive words about it. And I’m sure some small tuning is necessery fir the spec.
Arcane isn’t bad if you can properly manage mana (know when to burn and conserve, line these up with cooldowns), is a relatively enduring spec with Greater Invi, images, magic dmg dampening shield etc.
What we don’t like is movement heavy fights, we do have shimmer and barrage but can’t do full dps in execute phase like fire (Scorch crit, blast crit, instant pyro…), and we have to know what the enemy does this phase and that so it won’t mess with our burst and force us to leave the ring of power.
At least the rotation is simple, I mean, you use 3 spells in ST and 2 in AoE rotation (not counting talents).
In addition, it is the ‘safest’ mage spec to play, because Frost is proc-reliant (and lego-reliant for M+ since glacial fragments is powerful), and Fire is gear and critchain-reliant. Nothing similar exists for Arcane, your baseline damage is good and simple, so it’s perfect for starting out.
Biggest issue I have right now is I can do 19-20’s and even some 21’s but only on easy fortified weeks. Anything higher than that and I just start suffering. Tyrannical weeks just don’t work and above 21’s the pride becomes an issue because I either have to pop all my cds on it and be useless for boss or we risk wiping the group because I can’t do decent dps outside my burst window.
Right now I can get away by only dropping rune of power and trying to stack 3 clearcast procs on the pride before a boss pull so I can burst really hard. But in higher than a 21 I definitly will have to use my clearcast procs just to get the pride down and that’ll make my " cheese " boss dmg strat suffer highly.
Especialy since I use only one potency conduit souldbind paired with the first strike power that gives you 25% crit on first 5 seconds on an ennemy ( which is why I can open for almost as big as a boomkin convoking ).
Arcane lacks in both ST damage and utilities. We don’t have any stuns or disorient or anything to help out a tank like a fire mage DB or a boomkin trees.
Many arcane guides are full of errors. Things like: “cast missiles only when clearcast at 4 charges”. There are several situations that is a good choice to cast missiles without clearcast or charges.
Also arcane gameplay can be really different depending on the legendary, arcane echo and the covenant. Even stat prioirity. And that doesn’t help to make it more popular.
My advice, test everything by yourself, do numbers, explore the synergies, try different burst rotations and don’t get stucked on internet guides.
There is a sampling issue on Overall Mythic statistics. You can go on a per boss basis and you will see that in most bosses Arcane is on the lower end.
Up until you get to Council and Sludgefist where you have so few Arcane mages that are blasting and the spec ends looking like the best spec in the game for Sludgefist until Denathrius.
That’s why it places so high on the overall statistics because it’s being pushed up by 2-8 parses on the later bosses.
You can change the graph to Heroic where you have a bigger sample size:
very misleading, arcane gets carried by 1 person having some insane numbers on sludge (the same problem boomies are facing with their council skewing the whole spec)
wrong, arcane has no real “stat prio” currently, every stat is nice for us. going for max ilvl (max int) is the right move in 99% of the cases. a top gear sim will confirm that usually
he sims that bad because he is using bad talents for raiding mainly, here you go:
looking at mythic data in itself is not a bad thing but as you said you have to keep the context in mind.
HC data does not tell the whole picture either because theres a lot of “bad” arcane mages running around (its very easy to be bad with arcane, other specs give you much better damage for worse overall play)
Some covenants have more synergy with AB than AM, but for me to go 0% haste was the way to increase my damage. So completly agree with Lunaera.
As Venthyr i cast Mirrors 6-8s before Touch of Magi/Arcane Power. So i got 3 AM to proc an insane amount of Arcane Echo.
In this 8s burst window of Touch of Magi, having high crit is awesome, but high haste seems irrelevant.
More haste, unlike DoTs, doesn’t mean more missiles or barrages. So what’s the point of having haste? I go 0% haste, even I’ve reduced some ilvl and I got a damage increase.
I tested a dozen of trinket combinations, and the crit ones gave me the best results. The Darkmoon Faire one is perfect, I hope it could be upgraded at some point.
I’m the first on damage on my guild since then by a safe margin. Ofc I’m just an average player on an average guild. I’m not pushing any limit.
Agree on the Sludgefist, it’s a great fight for arcane, and the one that opened my eyes about arcane sinergies.
