scorch build is weird, orb buidl is somewhat okay, but why ST arcane feels so underwhelming… arcane blast is hitting for 50 with cds, and arcane orb for 47k… but its an aoe uncapped spell… why single target dmg, and hardcasting is so heavily penalized, when its already penalized by being a hardcast to begin with and have the risk of being interrupted…
right now mage feels like a glass cannon, except… the cannon part
during tww it was way tankier, while the damage was still kinda horrible, the rotation felt a bit more fluid.
its in a very weird place right now.. while i can be top dps in bg… i am often low on killing blows, because im playing mythic plus in bg essentially… if i want to go and steal a base or 1v1 or 1v2 someone… im still doing aoe rotation because it does the same dmg as my single target one… but it hits more ppl.. its very weird.
I didn’t play mage in season 1 but honestly s2 and s3 TWW arcane was so good imo, it was super satisfying, intuitive and really not as hard as people kept saying. I wish people had stopped gaslighting themselves into thinking how hard it was because it wasn’t and tbh they really missed out on a great spec lol.
I’ve been playing Arcane since exp start, but I’m getting to a point where I’m struggling to justify bringing it to content and I need Blizzard to actually acknowledge what’s going on here.
Single target is just bad even after some buffs that they did.
Now let’s talk about defensives, because holy moly.
50% of Mythic boss kills with an Arcane Mage have the mage dying before the boss. We really need some active damage reduction.
Frost had Cold Snap. Fire had Cauterize. Arcane had Greater Invisibility.
Then Fire and Frost also got GInvis. Fair enough, so Arcane got something else to compensate, right?
No! Arcane got nothing!
Now GInvis has no damage reduction for anyone, but Fire and Frost still keep their original defensives. What exactly is greater about Greater Invisibility anymore?
pve is also a million times more accessible… in pvp the lack of ginvi wall and mirror images wall is massive, along with tempest barrier, diverted energy, mass barrier and so on… its just glass… u die in 3 seconds, and with the amount of stuns/silences out there, plus fake casting through interrupts its literally insane… like, in pvp, agaisnt somewhat decent players, u cannot cast arcane surge… 2 seconds, TWO SECONDS of cast time in pvp, is too long atm… in fact most of the times i do a successful pvp encounter i used a target dummy on the floor to cast it… because if i had to land one on a night elf hunter dh or rogue id just give up… other classes it really depends, monk will incap, than sweep, then ring of peace, then try to interrupt u… and so on… its complete bs to cast that just to start your dps rotation atm.
Bottom Tier Performance: On single-target bosses, Arcane is significantly behind almost every other spec. We are consistently at the bottom of the meters, making the spec a liability for any progression team.
High Effort, Zero Reward: Arcane remains one of the most punishing and complex specs to play. One forced movement during a burst window, and your DPS is ruined. Currently, even with a perfect rotation, we are still stuck at the bottom.
Broken Identity: Mastery, which used to be the core of Arcane, feels weak and unrewarding. The spec’s scaling is off, and we are forced to choose between being a “Raid bench-warmer.”
Furthermore, the balance between Hero Talents is completely broken. As an Arcane mage, I feel forced into a specific playstyle that I don’t enjoy just to hope for competitive numbers.
Please stop forcing us into a single ‘meta’ build and balance the numbers so we can play the fantasy we actually enjoy without being a burden to our raid team.
Arcane has a 15% magic dr on barrier, which would be enough I think if it had 2 charges like frost does. I can’t play any other spec than frost because it’s so far ahead defensively.
