Wow… These are nice changes.
Really liked them. Especially Master of Time talent makes me happy. After Arcane lost displacement, it needs some extra mobility to be ceompetitive.
Nice changes, thanks Blizz. 
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Apparently there was a leak by limit, that a lot of major cooldowns are coming off the GCD, including AP and Icy veins!
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What’s your source on this? Don’t get my hopes up man! Also seems odd after rune changes?
And you know this how? Because a wise man once said that there are no miracles, and people who want you to believe that there are usually want to sell you something. Crap on a stick, most probably. Thus I’m disinclined to take anything for granted when it concerns Arcane. GCD nerf was a whole thing in BFA, so big that I don’t see those guys backing down on it. That would be admitting their decision was wrong, and this is a big no-no in corporation culture. Because when people are wrong, this means the corp lost money, and it has to recoup its losses, you get my drift?
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https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/shadowlands-update-some-spells-no-longer-on-gcd/630189
It is true! Yessssss, finally AP is actually a good button in PvP.
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AP off GCD. Gotta get the macros back to bars.
Rune baked into AP.
Orb/Enlightened switched.
…Waiting for the catch to be revealed. This is too good to be true. Getting the feeling of being thrown a bone to shut up and not look at other problems.
Will the price be not touching Missiles proc rate & damage? Or no reliable cleave for us more often than once per 45s?
(Yeah, I’m THAT cynical after seeing what BFA did to Arcane)
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Very likely, sadly. Maybe in a later patch, if arcane turns out to be the best spec and more people start complaining about it.
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Blink off GCD.
yes!
Lvl 30 row entirely removed. Example replacement - defensive row consisting of Master of Escape , Prismatic Cloak and Temporal Shield .
yes something like this probably needs to happen. Would love to see the 2 blink charges + displacement gameplay survive somehow though.
Mastery: Savant increases damage of all spell schools instead of only arcane.
Fireblast damage increased, should hit closely to Arcane Blast.
Frostbolt removed, replaced with Cone of Cold .
Cone of Cold doing actual damage, with a target cap.
Don’t agree with this. The arcane rotation does not need more buttons. If you want burst aoe on a cd you can spec into orb. Why do you think they need Fireblas?
I really like the arcane rotation after SL changes. The fact that charges now affect all arcane spells again is awesome. Think it makes the rotation way more interesting and it’s important to the spec identity imo. Another aspect that is unique/cool about the arcane rotation is based around resource management rather that cooldowns. It’s all about managing charges and mana and not at all about watching timers.
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Cone of Cold isn’t about AoE damage. It’s about AoE snare, something we had once, long ago, and then promptly lost. Its main use is PvP, levelling, those awkward situations when you cannot Frost Nova targets in place, root-immune targets, some instant to throw around that’s not Arcane school. We had AoE snare in Legion again so Cone wasn’t needed much - Slooow Down Aluneth trait was doing its job (no active Slow > it affected everything in radius around main target). Then BFA pre-patch removed it again, because fun was detected.
Frostbolt is likely to be useless as we have better nukes and better ST snare but should stay, just in case of being kicked, or some crazy Frost-vulnerable mechanics.
Fire Blast depends on how much it does/costs, if it’s too good, then it’s going to be macroed in your basic Blast spam. But, y’know, it’s ranged instant that’s not Arcane school. So you’re not likely to be kicked out of it. And it doesn’t have cast/channel time. And it doesn’t eat your ramp-up time or charges. So while I’d prefer to get Ice Lance, Fire Blast might have some use.
Say, have you been playing Arcane recently? It revolves around AP & Evocation cooldowns. These CDs dictate when you can nuke things and when you have to be more careful with mana/dps ratio. CDs because if you screw something up - like burn > evo > burn > omg oom - you’re standing around doing close to nothing, and looking bad. Sorry, but as long as mana-eating Blast spam deals top DPS and Evocation exists to get your mana back, cooldowns are there to stay.
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Cone of Cold isn’t about AoE damage. It’s about AoE snare , something we had once, long ago, and then promptly lost. Its main use is PvP, levelling, those awkward situations when you cannot Frost Nova targets in place, root-immune targets, some instant to throw around that’s not Arcane school. We had AoE snare in Legion again so Cone wasn’t needed much - Slooow Down Aluneth trait was doing its job (no active Slow > it affected everything in radius around main target). Then BFA pre-patch removed it again, because fun was detected.
If that’s the point of it then I agree with you. I think it’s unlikely to happen though since they just nerfed our mobility hard. And if they were to revert the nerf in some way I’d rather see them bring back mobility than add a snare.
Fire Blast depends on how much it does/costs, if it’s too good, then it’s going to be macroed in your basic Blast spam. But, y’know, it’s ranged instant that’s not Arcane school. So you’re not likely to be kicked out of it. And it doesn’t have cast/channel time. And it doesn’t eat your ramp-up time or charges. So while I’d prefer to get Ice Lance, Fire Blast might have some use.
I feel like there could be more elegant solutions to us being to hardly punished by interrupts. Don’t have a solution on the top of my head though, so I will cede this point to you.
Say, have you been playing Arcane recently? It revolves around AP & Evocation cooldowns. These CDs dictate when you can nuke things and when you have to be more careful with mana/dps ratio. CDs because if you screw something up - like burn > evo > burn > omg oom - you’re standing around doing close to nothing, and looking bad. Sorry, but as long as mana-eating Blast spam deals top DPS and Evocation exists to get your mana back, cooldowns are there to stay.
I consider evocation and AP more long term strategic CDs that are a layer on top of your moment to moment rotation. They are sort of separate from your rotational CDs, you don’t think about them the same way you think about Fireblast and Cone of Cold cds.
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Fireball & Frostbolt tuned to deal damage around equal to Arcane Blast on 0 charges so other schools’ nukes should never be better damage option, but close enough to get 1-2 casts off without feeling you’d do better with a wand until Arcane lockout ends.
Ice Lance, Flamestrike, Blizzard back. Cheap instant with no CD apart from GCD and AoEs targetable on ground. All 3 not Arcane school so not optimal but usable & kick-resistant.
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I’m not saying they should be rotational, but that doesn’t mean that they should be useless either. Otherwise what’s the point of unpruning them?
Mages already got the short end of the stick when it comes to unpruning, getting mostly some filler damage spells, at least make them do some damage, so they have a use…
I honestly wish it was! Nothing feels better than doing a fat Flamestrike into CoC Shatter combo in Classic, just seeing all the crits and healthbars disappearing.
Frostbolt is okay for fire, but for Arcane…it’s literally the most useless spell in existance. I’d honestly take destro’s casted Corruption over Frostbolt on my arcane mage, unless FB’s dmg gets doubled or tripled.
Arcane/Frost’s Fireblast is on GCD, unlike fire.
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We got 2 (two) utility spells back: Fire & Frost Wards. Several expansions after they’ve been merged into Mage Ward with added bonus of absorbing Arcane damage too. Makes sense that casters have some protection specifically against what they use, like plate users and their armor vs physical damage. But seemingly 20% HP bubbles that break when a melee guy looks at us funny are enough for Blizz…
Uber-hasted Blizzard spam in Wrath if you specced for it. Sick DPS, sick crit ratio, sick fps drain from all those big numbers coming up on screen.
Requirements: Haste potion, AP, Icy Veins, those 2 talents that increased crit damage of all spells from +50 to +75% and Frost spells by x2 so Blizzard was doing 250% crit damage not counting meta gem, maybe that 2/4/6% Frost damage talent if you still had spare points. This made 8s channel complete in 3-4 seconds, dealing multiple hits every tick. Every hit had 10% chance to proc Clearcasting so free spellcast, the aoe spam train has no brakes captain! And Clearcasting granted Arcane Potency i.e. +30% crit chance for the next hit. Why content yourself with +50% Shatter if you can get like 70% natural crits, no freezing required? 
And then you’d get T10, with its bonuses: 12% Haste for 5s after casting procced Missiles, 18% damage for 30s after casting Mirrors so 30s of no threat for you when you nuke things down like a boss.
This was easiest to execute on Anub’arak in heroic Trial of the Crusader - 1 boss & 4 adds that had to die yesterday, enough add phases to Invisibility out of combat for more Haste pots, and you were going to put some more points in Frost anyway to get improved Frost Ward for execute phase. The confused disbelievers yelling on comms when you thoroughly own their Fire Mages & Unholy DKs at their own game: priceless.
Yup, that’s what I’ve said, should’ve made it clear that I’m talking about Arcane spec. Fire doesn’t have spammable snare so they might have some use for Frostbolt, but not Arcane. Fireball will likely deal better DPS in case of getting kicked and Slow is instant anyway.
Oh. So it’s not going to be mandatorily macroed with Blast. Good. Instant with meh damage is better than no damage when moving and out of other options. Still would prefer Ice Lance as it doesn’t have a 12s CD.
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Mages already got the short end of the stick when it comes to unpruning, getting mostly some filler damage spells, at least make them do some damage, so they have a use…
I think blizzard is fine with people not putting certain unpruned abilities on the action bar at all. I think it’s more about them moving in a direction where they are not the ones deciding which spells players use, even if some are seemingly useless.
Personally I dislike a lot of stuff with the unpruning. I’m one of those players that doesn’t want more buttons. I want a small number of impactful, interesting and understandable abilities. I want to move away from playing guitar hero with your rotation priority list and move towards reactionary gameplay, having positioning matter and strategic planning.
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They did mention that(In the blizzcon QnA, if I remember right), but they were talking about flavourful abilities with no combat aplications, such as Eye of Kilrogg and Farsight.
I don’t believe so. Adding like 2-3 extra abilities to a tightly scripted synergeticly designed rotation, doesn’t even come close to achieving that.
Seems more like an attempt to repair small and annoying weaknesses that came up with the pruning and Legion re-design.
For Example:
Fire’s lack of slows, easy Frostbolt. Or the lack of AOE on the move, outside Hot Streak instant Flamestrikes, bam Arcane Explosion.
For Arcane, the endless annoyance of killing Totems, Banners, Psyfiends or Explosive orbs in M+, bam Fireblast, instant, no travel time and on fire school.
And Frost, same as arcane, wasting FoF procs to kill a totem, or sitting awkwardly casting frostbolt in M+ AOE, since you’ve already dropped your Blizzard and Frozen Orb, here Arcane Explosion comes as a nice filler.
But…adding more abilities does exactly that 
. The more abilities you have, the better you can react to the situation and plan out your next move.
It wouldn’t make sense for you to dislike unpruning, if that’s the type of gameplay you would like to have.
A good example is mage PvP in classic, where you might have some priorities, like Ice blocking Mortal Coil or Blind, but when it comes to killing your opponent, every fight is different and you have to play reactively.
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It wouldn’t make sense for you to dislike unpruning, if that’s the type of gameplay you would like to have.
But…adding more abilities does exactly that
It wouldn’t make sense for you to dislike unpruning, if that’s the type of gameplay you would like to have.
What I mean by reactionary gameplay is that I want to move complexity from your rotation to external factors like boss abilities and other players instead. And also move towards having more abilities that you have to aim or time correctly.
For example in games like monster hunter and dark souls you’re happy if you get a hit in at all. There are no complex rotations or cooldowns and stuff but these games are still interesting/hard/complex. I’m not saying I want wow to become dark souls or monster hunter, I’m just trying to make a point that you can have complex and interesting gameplay with a small amount of abilities. Dota is another good example.
Also being able to react to situations is not just about having more abilities. Instead of having cone of cold and blink you could have just blink with 2 charges. Instead of having mirror image and invisibility you could have just invisibility with a shorter cooldown.
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I suppose, but in Dark souls 95% of a boss fight, is learning the mechanics and their timing and it’s also generally a 1v1 situation. Dark Souls, Sekiro, etc are just an entire different beast and using the same ideals for WoW, doesn’t really work a lot of the time.
Like you can’t really expect a Raid boss to be as difficult as a Sekiro boss to every single one of the 20+ players in a raid group, and also require the team coordination that harder WoW bosses usually do.
Sekiro and Dark Souls bosses just provide a whole another level of personal engagement, that WoW can’t really re-create in a group environment, so that makes your player character and how it plays, the main source of player engagement. That’s why I’ve always said, that if your class is boring, no matter how good the content is, everything is still boring.
That could work, but the entire game has to be rebalanced around it.
Since even if we just cut have of our abilities and slap another charge on the other half…it’s still not even remotely the same.
Due to casting 2 separate abilities triggering 2 cooldowns at a time, makes the overall recharge rate twice as fast, over a single ability with 2 charges.
Also due to how WoW works, it just makes the game more boring and repetitive.
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Arcane missle used to look cool now its just fairy dust and does not do good damage outside clearcasting and pummeling.
Arcane power need to be boosted to 60% damage in pvp rather than 30 because apparently you still do bad damage even with it
Arcane power need to give you cool looking aura like Kaioken gives a good aura to Goku.
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I’d like to see the return of the mark of aluneth as it was a beautiful ability which felt insanely impactful. I kind of miss elements of legion arcane, I wish there was a way of making arcane missiles generate an arcane charge and stack in uses again as that felt better than stacking clunky arcane blasts.
Legion arcane whilst it wasn’t amazing at least felt like it was strong and didn’t feel so rigid due to the aoe and mana mark of aluneth granted as a reprieve.
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Like you can’t really expect a Raid boss to be as difficult as a Sekiro boss to every single one of the 20+ players in a raid group, and also require the team coordination that harder WoW bosses usually do.
Sekiro and Dark Souls bosses just provide a whole another level of personal engagement, that WoW can’t really re-create in a group environment, so that makes your player character and how it plays, the main source of player engagement. That’s why I’ve always said, that if your class is boring, no matter how good the content is, everything is still boring.
I think that wow bosses has the potential to be, and some times are, much harder than dark souls bosses because of the coordination aspect. I also want to reiterate that I don’t want wow to become dark souls.
What I’m trying to say is that I want wow to move more in a direction where you have to spend most of your focus on reacting to what the boss, or your teammates are doing. Instead of watching for a Clearcasting proc, or watching the arcane orb cooldown, I’d want to be constantly trying to dodge boss abilities/animations and move out of the way of teammates or move to teammates to help them.
That could work, but the entire game has to be rebalanced around it.
Since even if we just cut have of our abilities and slap another charge on the other half…it’s still not even remotely the same.
I don’t think they should make such a change over night, but I’d like to see them move in that direction.
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