Blink being the only mobility spell and still being on GCD.
Fireblast damage equivalent to Arcane Missiles tick, has 0 synergy with arcane.
Frostbolt damage less than Arcane Missiles tick, also 0 synergy with arcane.
Alter Time having an internal GCD before re-cast.
Spec issues:
Arcane Barrage refunding half the mana of what the tooltip says.
Arcane Blast damage slightly underwhelming.
Arcane Power’s mana cost reduction affecting Clearcasting proc rate.
Arcane Power nerfed to 20% in PvP.
Arcane Power cooldown increased to 2mins, desyncing it with other CDs.
Clearcasting proc rate per mana spent too low, also proc is dispelable.
Mastery: Savant only affecting Arcane damage(Fireblast, Frostbolt and non-Kyrian covenant abilities are not affected).
Displacement pruned, removing the mobility niche of Arcane over Fire/Frost.
Talent issues:
Rune of Threes, Arcane Familliar, Slipstream, Focus Magic, Nether Tempest, Ice Ward, Reverberate, Supernova and Time Anomaly are all dead talents.
Master of Time does not reset Blink’s cooldown when Alter Time is canceled.
Shimmer mandatory to land CC in arena, due to Blink being on GCD.
Incanter’s Flow is too weak after Rune of Power buffs and it’s also nerfed in PvP.
Focus Magic doesn’t seem to work at all.
Rune of Power is too strong to not take, but also annoying to play around.
Nether Tempest does no damage and also breaks all CC in sight.
Arcane Orb is not baseline.
Supernova hits like a wet noodle.
Overpowered further reduces Clearcasting procs, nerfed to 33% in PvP.
Time Anomaly too weak in PvE, also Time Warp proc doesn’t work in PvP.
Mass Invisibility and Temporal Shield mandatory for PvP, leaving us only 1 slot.
Arcane Empowerment being the only offensive option in PvP talents.
Covenant issues:
Radiant Spark is Arcane school, also gets fully consumed by Arcane Missiles.
Deathborne is just bad, has a cast time and it’s 3min cooldown.
Mirrors of Torment procs only once every 6seconds, does low damage, it’s dispelable and refunds 4% mana per mirror instead of giving Clearcasting procs.
Arcane Prodigy potency conduit doesn’t work at all.
Nether Precision potency conduit doesn’t work at all.
Artifice of the Archmage proc chance is too low and only gives 2 Arcane Charges.
Flow of Time cooldown reduction of Shimmer is halved.
Incantation of Swiftness is just really bad and also nerfed for Greater Invisibility.
Cryo-Freeze and Diverted Energy are badly designed, mage survivability should be based on avoiding/preventing damage taken.
Legendary issues:
Siphon Storm is just clunky, unfun and badly designed, also copy-pasted from Azerite gear.
Expanded Potential proc’ing only from Arcane Blast, makes it clunky for PvP.
Disciplinary Command increasing crit damage, whenever Arcane no longer has Shatter.
Grisly Icicle breaking on teammate damage.
Norgannon’s Sagacity stacks consumed on movement and not casting, also bugged with macros.
Triune Ward taking away another niche strength of Arcane in PvP and giving it to all specs.
This must have taken some time to write, so firstly, thank you for your time.
Secondly, I agree fully 100% with every sentence.
Thirdly, I want to add some issues:
Arcane is vulnerable to interruption, as most of the basic mage toolkit is Arcane school. Can’t cast polymorph, counterspell, etc.
Arcane lacks cleave. Arcane Barrage, TotM+Arcane Echo is the only way which is bad for 2 targets.
Arcane has no ranged AoE apart from Arcane Orb and the newly Arcane Echo making it standing in melee range risky and sometimes unwanted.
Arcane suffers the most from movements, sometimes you don’t want to teleport forward but move a little.
For the same reason it got changed to affect all spells and not only blast and barrage. Stat scaling later on could lead into a degenerate gameplay, like never pressing Arcane Missiles or no Ice Lance spec.
You can’t really compare Frost and Arcane mastery, since Frost mastery is passively generated damage from your rotation + a bonus damage to a cooldown. While arcane’s mastery directly affects your rotational spells and what you press.
I’m personally fine with those and I appreciate that arcane has it’s own niche of dealing AOE. Also it’s well complemented with its heavier defensive toolkit and mobility.
I do dislike the 2 target cleave, but it’s not the end of the world to not be good at dealing with every situation.
That would be instantly fixed with my suggestions to make Blink off GCD and improve the proc rate of Clearcasting, that will allow us to play Slipstream and deal with this annoyance.
No, it’s not okay…other classes got stuff like Intervene, Desparate Prayer, Cyclone, etc. If mages are getting damage spells over utility and CC, at least make them do damage.
Hardcasting Missiles into Arcane Echo is more DPS than spamming Blast, imo that’s not okay. Personally, I think our damage should look like this:
Clearcast Missiles > Blast spam > Missiles spam >= Conserve rotation(4 blasts into barrage)
That’s just what makes sense.
I do however agree with Barrage buff, it should feel rewarding, not punishing.
Yes but by making effect all arcane spells they’ve fixed that. Fire blast and frost bolt aren’t part of the rotation they are just there so that one leggo works.
Good thing: There is someone doing the Titans’ work when I’m not around. Bad thing: Arcane is still meh and it’s because of devs. AGAIN.
Let’s say that in general I agree with all the posted issues. Have to comment on some particulars though.
Would not be a problem… IF we were still playing WotLK. In which if you had sprint and some movement speed increase you counted as “mobile”. But nowadays there are DHs, Monks, Druids everywhere and now it’s not that these monkeys on speed are crazy fast, but it’s everyone else that is slow because if half of the raid can be so fast, then it’s new standard movement speed. Times change, Slipstream should be baseline, Displacement back to Arcane. Fire and Frost don’t lose like 90% of their DPS output if they have to move around a bit because they have rotational instant casts. Arcane loses output and has no good instants because Barrage dumps charges, its dmg sucks and it is only normally used in conserve phase, aka the no CDs phase, aka trash DPS phase.
Reported bazillion times. Guess what? Still not fixed. So in certain situations it’s still better to not cast a spell & wait for mana than cast a spell. Not only bad, but STUPIDLY BAD.
More accurately it’s desynced with other CDs if you’re not using stuff that decreases AP cooldown, like NF Shifting Power. Which is BAD AF as a general rule. Specs should not be designed around having something coming from endgame.
It’s wrong mechanic, period. Can’t polish the turd. “1 spell free of cost” would be fine in general for Arcane, encouraging slightly more aggressive mana management, but Missiles - spell that you should want to use only on proc - don’t belong on the same proc as AoE. It’s combined old Clearcasting (next 1 spell cast free) and Missile Barrage (next 1 Missiles cast free & halved channeling time) but as always someone didn’t do their research and missed the crucial parts.
Proc being dispellable brings to my mind that some other spec procs are NOT dispellable for some reason. Even when they should.
Mastery does too many things and it’s either too weak or too strong. Should do: Increase damage of spells. Maybe should do: Increase mana regen. DEFINITELY should not do: Increase mana pool. Because the two mana-related parts have extremely strong synergy with each other, making it increasingly better to have large amounts of Mastery due to Arcane’s damage being mostly governed by available mana. You have more mana & regenerate it faster = you deal more damage. Currently we’re in “too strong” phase so Mastery beats everything else in pure output for point.
Fire Blast… Have I told you today that Ice Lance would be better cuz no CD?.. And Fireball would be better DPS option in case of being kicked in Arcane…
Frostbolt is just no DPS spell, slightly better than going AFK. Better than nothing but not by much. It’s redundant for Arcane because we have better snare and while we’re not casting Arcane spells, we’re not dealing damage, end of story.
Reverberate has a niche use in sustained AoE. But if you need sustained AoE, chances are you’d be better served by changing to another spec, so kinda yeah… All others are just dead because something else is miles better.
And it has 25 seconds cooldown while Fel Rush has 10. World of Monkeyonspeedcraft.
Said it for like 754627 times. It just doesn’t fit. Should be removed together with Rune of Turret and damage flatly increased by some 16%.
You mean there are people taking Focus? And they call themselves Mages when all they do is support someone else’s output? For shame! S H A M E !
On the other hand it might be clever ploy by lazy devs: no need to work on something that is never used, so nobody will notice! But when someone DOES notice, it’s baaad! Kinda like now
Burn it. BURN IT! Together with Incanter. Obligatory reminder here that Arcane is ALREADY A TURRET SPEC because we either stand & cast or we’re not doing real DPS. Anything that limits us FURTHER is just bad. And it STACKS WITH OTHER COOLDOWNS so extra bad. And we have to stand 8y from its casting point or we lose its benefit. DOUBLEPLUSUNGOOD. UNEXIST IT AT ONCE.
Also Flamestrike and Blizzard are not baseline. Because SOMEONE thought it would be a great idea to make a Mage - you know, that RANGED caster guy who is squishy so should stay away - go in MELEE RANGE to use AoE spells. And Barrage is still capped at 5 targets and SUCKS. Related to…
Nuff said. It is truth, and by such truths is one demotivated from playing their spec.
Bad mechanic, bad talent, should be Arcane Power Rank 2 or something like that. And enough with that double damage for 10-15s of being GOD OF DPS nonsense. Burst down so we don’t suck if we’re screwed by RNG move mechanic or CC, sustain up so we deal decent DPS out of cooldowns, AP 30-40% dmg bonus would be good enough provided there’s no Rune of Turret required. Because as long as Rune exists, RoP-OP WILL be too powerful to consider anything else. Synergy between these two is just FAR too strong.
Time Anomaly exists. RNG crap in binary, tightly controlled spec that at any given moment is either 1) bursting or 2) not bursting. Has no synergy with ANYTHING. Is not good on paper. Is not good in real WoW environment. Is only good for people addicted to dopamine rush when they win at slot machine, not minding that earlier they lost over 9000 times.
Here we go with imbalance… And if it wasn’t consumed, then it would be endlessly exploited for Rune+AP+Touch+Rad Missiles spam…
See above. Also it not synced with anything except Touch. Cleave would be nice… IF it had like 15 seconds cooldown, not 15-20s of cleave once per 3 minutes.
Skipping other Cov issues as they’re symptomatic of rushed expansion pack. “We want you to pay us now and you’ll get the product in some 8-12 months”.
Yep. Bad all over and to make it worse it’s Brain Storm craperite shmait.
Wouldn’t be that bad if Blast had shorter cast time than 2,25s. Would also help with sick quadratic damage scaling because Charges not only make you hit harder, but also cast Blast quicker so double benefit. Alas, it would require some common sense among devs…
Makes me kinda glad I didn’t pay for Systemlands. THAT amount of bugs and general lack of polish isn’t becoming even for a small, indie, multi-dollar company xd
Ok…so TWO of our returning spells are just there so we can proc a mediocre legendary that most people won’t go for and to kill totems?
Frost and Fire Ward got removed and we got nothing in return, Alter Time as replacement for Displacement/Temporal Shield and lastly Mirror Image.
So we practically got Mirror Image, Arcane Explosion for fire/frost, Mana Gem and Phoenix Flames for all 3 specs combined.
Meanwhile Arms Warrior:
Intervene - insane peel in PvP, has plenty of use in PvE group content too.
Piercing Howl - AOE 70% slow.
Ignore Pain - Strong defensive on 12sec cooldown.
Spell Reflect - Old version, but still baseline.
Shattering Throw - Niche, but extremely strong in those situations.
And if you’re feeling fancy, you even have Shield Slam and Challenging Shout for some off tanking.
And I’m probably missing something too.
Like those 2 aren’t even comparable, just shows how unfair this “unpruning” was towards mage.
Like never pressing Arcane Missiles during AP in bfa?
Most of that has nothing to do with do with what I was talking about. The main reasons for the bfa rotation were overpowered azerite traits and no effort being made to compenstate for the removal of legion systems. Mastery did play into it a small part but that has been changed so it does effect missles now.
You shouldn’t be moaning mastery doesn’t effect frostbolt and fireblast, you should be moaning it’s a really boring mastery.
Most masteries are boring. I just want my spells to be useful, instead of being totem killing buttons, and the bare minimum for that is them doing damage.
I don’t think I’m asking for much here, am I?
If you want something more interesting, here’s an idea for both:
Fireblast - Blast the enemy for X fire damage. Hitting a frozen target, shatters their root, knocking them back and dealing a guaranteed critical hit.
Frostbolt - Launches a bolt of frost at the enemy, dealing X frost damage and slowing movement speed by 50% for 8sec. Slowed enemies get frostbitten instead, freezing them in place for 4sec.
Great post Vindy, i completely agree with all of your points.
I dont like frost mage after double ice lance changes. I dont like fire at all. I love arcane, so ever since arcane been useless, i stopped playing mage, after hearing of reworks and buffs i returned to my mage. Please either buff/fix some of his issues, or let us know this is the state you want arcane to be in so we can reroll.
some time themed spell for stunning players would be nice
