are they good pvp/pve?
they look fun
It’s pretty good in PvE (M+ and Torghast) in my experience. I’m pulling respectable numbers in both ST and AoE, even on long tyrannical fights and I’m absolutely melting most bosses in a matter of seconds in Torghast.
It is a bit boring though, we don’t have many abilities baseline and talented abilities like Nether Tempest don’t really compete, whilst Supernova is clearly a CC ability that’s been put in a damage row.
I don’t have much experience in PvP, but from I can tell, it sucks. Most of our damage comes from hard-casting abilities, which doesn’t work so well with so many CCs, pseudo interrupts and vast amounts of melee mobility in the game.
By far the biggest issue I can see with PvP is that we’re still tied almost entirely to 1 spell school, whilst possessing no interrupt protection. So if someone interrupts an Arcane spell, you lose all mobility, nearly all of your damage and most of your CC and defensives.
Of the few Arcane Mages I’ve seen in arena (2s), they’re all pretty much entirely carried by their healer, which as far as I can tell, is almost always a Holy Paladin.
think im going fire or something after lvl 50 : P
It is very fun indeed. Shadowlands gave Arcane a small and needed rework to some of it’s abilities. It feels much better to play than in BFA. Playing DPS spec is all about managing your cooldowns. Playing Arcane is managing your cooldowns and mana but amplified.
Arcane Mage unlike Fire or Frost got 2 filler spells. Arcane Blast is our single target filler and Arcane Explosion is our AOE filler. Both of them can grant us Arcane Charges to make our spells more powerful. Arcane Blast is also kinda unique compared to Frostbolt or Fireball as it is BOTH our main filler AND spender.
Arcane got more DPS cooldowns than other mage specs (Fire and Frost got Combustion and Icy Veins to manage, Arcane got Arcane Power but also Touch of the Magi, Presence of Mind and Evocation). As Arcane you want to line up your cooldowns then pop them all at the same time trying to do as much damage while Arcane Power and Touch of the Magi are active (burn phase). Doing this we burn all our mana just to be able to use Evocation after which we begin conserve phase during which we try to do as much damage as possible while staying mana neutral.
Arcane plays similar to Fire - you pop your cooldowns when they’re up and you can make a huge burst of damage during short period of time. While in burn phase Arcane can easily match or even surpass a Fire Mage during combustion on single target. Charged Touch of the Magi into Arcane Barrage into Arcane Orb into another Barrage and all while Arcane Power and Rune of Power are active can deal A LOT of AOE dmg in M+. Outside of that Arcane Explosion spam + Arcane Barrage + Arcane Orb and Shifting Power combo make us very competitive in huge AOE. We can also deal with heavy incoming damage or drop aggro easier and faster than other specs (Arcane got Grater Invivisility which is instant compared to Frost’s or Fire’s, grant us 60% damage reduction for few seconds and is on a lower CD as well).
Arcane is pretty good in PVP, it’s only downside is having only one casting school (if you get kicked during poly you can’t deal damage as all your spells are Arcane). However it got few advantages over Frost and Fire as well - Greater Invisibility which I talked about before, being able to spellsteal much more thanks to increased mana pool and mana regen through mastery and Evocation. In Shadowlands PVP talent Temporal Shield was also made available to Arcane only. We also have access to Mass Invisibility PVP talent which is very useful while setting up Polymorph or protecting our teammates from incoming CC. Arcane Missiles + Arcane Orb and Barrage allow for constant pressure on enemies. Once we pop our cooldowns we can deal some really huge burst damage as well.
Arcane is amazing for kiting in 1v1, Chrono Shift talent can make you pretty much permamently run 50% faster (if you can hit Arcane Barrage on enemy every 5 sec) while also keeping your enemy perma slowed. You also beat both Fire and Frost and most other casters in 1v1 like 90% of the time unless you screw up your cooldowns badly.
Personally I think Arcane is much more fun than either Frost or Fire. Fire is only really fun for 10 sec during Combustion and after it’s gone it’s honestly pretty meh and boring and Frost feels too RNG to be really fun. As Arcane you propably won’t be bursting people/mobs as hard or fast as Fire but you’re not far behind and instead you got much higher and more steady damage than Fire without it’s Combustion.
Arcane is all about ebb and flow, you build Arcane Charges, hit harder and faster with each but also consume more mana so you need to find a good balance where you use as much spells as possible without wasting too much mana. It also feels good to play underrated spec and suprise people by doing tons of damage in M+.
Also if you want to play Fire, it’s good cause both Arcane and Fire make excelent use of Night Fae’s Shifting Power skill which reduces their cooldowns on all spells. Shapeshift from Night Fae is also very helpful with Arcane’s limited mobility.
In PvE, arcane is viable, unless you’re planning on playing hardcore.
It shines mostly in Torghast. Just getting few of the important powers, can easily enable you to crush bosses.
In M+ it’s decent, with good gear you’ll be able to do +15s easily. But if you wanna push high-end keys, fire is gonna outperform hard.
In raiding, Arcane is below average. Even on good fights, you’ll have to put a lot of effort and play nearly perfect to outperform a large portion of the spec.
You’ll be fine if you want to just do normal/heroic, but for mythic, you’ll have to go extra lenghts to optimize your gear and learn openings inbetween boss mechanics to perform on a decent level.
And lastly for PvP…it’s just really really bad. You’ll need really good gear and you’ll still struggle to keep up with damage, it’s just really undertuned and it lacks both mobility, damage and CC.
If you’re doing WPvP, BGs, duels, then you’ll be fine. But pushing rated PvP above 1.8-2k rating, is going to be a nightmare without high rated friends to boost you.
2s with a healer is extremely bad, unless you have a god-tier healer that can do the same damage as you.
Overall, you’ll should have the best success with hybrids, such as boomy, feral, sp, ww, ret and also warrior + either disc priest or hpal as healer.
Mage is great for PvE (raids and dungeons), but is not so cool on solo play. It’s a little squishy in the openworld.
Here is all about arcane https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/arcane-damage/849944/15
Do beware though if you try to do M+ you might get frowned upon. World of warcraft have unfortunately turned into a Meta game where people only want boomy and mm hunter once you get to do m13+
I’ve sort of capped myself here at doing all dungeons on a +13 and timing em but i can’t get picked up for m14 and m15. Because people are biased against mages that dont play Fire.
No mount for me :C
But it does really not matter to me, i can still have fun but i’ve realized compared to fire and frost we reach a much harder cap, on our dps for M+ because ALL of our damage is stored in the cooldowns. So with that said most of your damage is capped into small well managed windows of opportunity. Yes it can be boring it can look repetitive but if it fits your playstyle and your comfortable with playing it, it does not matter much.
I do have one request for Blizzard though. Give us something that can make our spells look different… GIVE US GLYPHS SO WE CAN CHANGE UP THE APPERANCE OF OUR SPELLS…
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That’s exactly why fire is so good in m+. Frost hasn’t been having a good time either. There’s no reason you can’t get all 15s done on Arcane, it’d just be a slower process than doing it as fire… but thats slower than doing it as a tank or healer, it’s all relative.
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