I quit a few weeks back when I was just done playing frost mage because of the gap in dps, don’t like arcane, and with work and life don’t have the time or willpower to invest totally into a new class.
But I was scrolling reddit and just saw a chart for heroic raids, 90th percentile, and frost and fire were parsing at the top end of the table rather than the literal bottom 2 they were before.
So this seems pretty decent and like I would notice it.
As far as I can tell the buffs were just a flat 5% across all damage, is that right? How are people finding it? Wondering if I should come back now.
Where frost suffers is 3-6 targets. Bellow that we’re very strong, above that we’re very strong. Sadly, 3-6 targets is most pulls in a M+ run, but that’s just not where we shine. Adding another 5% buff would make no sense, since we would just go through the roof in ST and AoE. We already are the best ST mage spec, and adding 5% on top of that would just be too strong. We didn’t even need the 5% buff we recently got. What we need is an improvement to 3-6 targets damage, and then we’re fine.
Agreed.
I am playing Frost myself and I am absolutely destroying other classes…
I kind off dislike them buffing Frost like this because Arcane feels so absolutely useless now.
The “buff Frost or we quit” posts will now become “buff Arcane or we quit”…
There was a specific niche for all three specs, now it’s a niche for two specs and one obsolote spec.
Arcane is not obsolete at all. All 3 specs are very playable at the moment, and I think that’s probably the best state mage has been in, in a long time. All the 3 specs are very close to equal. Yes, frost with BiS gear and high uptime outperforms arcane damage-wise, but that is not really that important.
Arcane still has the best damage profile out of the 3 specs. In progression, very high ST and AoE burst damage will usually be better than sustained damage, and that’s exactly what arcane is. Frost may deal a bit more damage overall, but arcane is still the best spec for progression thanks to its profile. Arcane is very far from obsolete.
As someone who mained Arcane so far, it is pretty much obsolete…
There’s one key point that you missed and it’s the difficulty of the class and the learning curve needed. Now that Frost or Fire can “match” Arcane it’s just no worth the time needed to learn how to play properly that class, not even mentioning the fact that Arcane is heavily dependant on how your tank pulls mobs, mobility, understanding Arcane CD’s, how Touch of Magi works, etc…
There’s so many punishers for Arcane to be the one players will pick. Yeah, playing with friends that knows Arcane playstyle, coordinating CD’s and more yeah awesome dps, good class overall and viable but that’s just with all the situations under control, now add the fact that this expansion so far it’s the most “challenging” (even frustrating) for ranged so far and Arcane trying to cast arcane blasts, surge or arcane missiles with all those mechanics around.
It’s just not worth it… there’s so many things that will punish Arcane, of course mechanics affect all, frost and fire too, but not at the same level.
So yeah, even if numbers are there the reality is that Arcane right now is obsolete, not in raw performance, but it just make no sense.