All three mage specs, in some way, are based around “spell queueing” - lining up an instant cast spell after a hard cast such that both benefit from some effect. For example, Frost hard casts a Frostbolt/Glacial Spike queues a Flurry after it, the Flurry projectiles overtake the FB/GS in flight, and the hardcast gets shattered.
In the case of Arcane, the way it works is that there are three buffs that add damage to both Arcane Blast and Arcane Barrage: Nether Precision in the spec tree, Burden of Power in the Sunfury tree, and Intuition as our tww s1 4set bonus.
The Sunfury rotation was built around casting a Barrage right after Arcane Blast with Burden active, in which case the Abarr and AB would both benefit from the damage buff. This is also how the set bonus works, and how NP worked for much of the beta (except like a week when Blizzard removed this and then reverted it due to community feedback). With the change above, BoP will no longer benefit both AB and ABarr.
The reason it is important to have this mechanic is that it incentivizes us to cast Arcane Barrage. Without these incentives, we go to a rotation where we just spam AB and cast AM when we get a proc. We did this for the entirety of DF. Instead, these incentives in both Spellslinger and Sunfury work incredibly well and make for not one but two different, fun rotations that the community enjoys greatly. The change above pushes us back to the DF rotation of mindless AB AB AM spam.
I like other mages and players in general am against the removal of double dipping on burden of power simply because it fully changes how a spec plays for the worse from a mechanical point of view.
How ever these patch notes raised a different concern for me as well.
The thing most concerning to me is the frostfire bolt buff for fire, and don’t get me wrong it needs it, but how do YOU know it needs it ? currently on live Frostfire bolt does not trigger or consume Pyrotechnics and Firefall. It does not trigger the cooldown reduction from Unleashed Inferno, From the Ashes or Kindling. It also does not trigger Overflowing Energy, Frostfire Infusion or Frostfire Empowerment.
basically the spell doesn’t work with the fire kit at all yet you never post about bug fixes so are we suppose to believe these things are fixed as well as the spell receiving a buff or do you just slap a buff on a dysfunctional ability and call it a day ? you cite gameplay data and feedback from players on class performance but no one actually plays this because its not working so where is the data coming from ???
Why aren’t we getting patch notes that address all the bugs that makes specs overperform or keeps them fully unplayable before we receive sweeping changes to how a spec plays ? Changes like the ones announced today make me very worried about your “data collection” and decisions made based on this data.
and as for the patch as a whole what are the points of some of these changes ? even when positive it seems like they should be a part of something larger not one offs
Balance druid received laughable changes that result in a neutral on single target and a nerf on AOE
fire mage buffs are super small for single target
and the buff to voidbolt for shadowpriest does not magically fix their single target.
while 6% is cool for dev evoker it’s not enough for single target.
these specs aren’t slightly behind on single target they are hundreds of thousands behind the middle of the pack so these changes don’t make a dent
Please revert the Burden of Power change, this makes the Sunfury Arcane rotation much less fun, nerf the numbers instead if balance is needed.
And if you’re so worried about the interaction not being intuitive, improve the abilities tooltips or the way they work WITHOUT destroying the core part of the rotation.
The fact is that whoever wants to play this game at a decent level will at some point open a third-party website and read a guide, this interaction is well explained in every guide out there, deal with the fact that your players will open a third-party website please, or if you really hate it, make in-game guides explaining the rotation, instead of these unreasonable changes.
Ok, what is this?
I’m specifically referring to the double dipping part. You’ve made the same mistake you did at the beginning of August, which you then corrected after our receiving feedback, and now, re-introduced it with the added issue that we are two weeks away from the start of the season. Had you learn nothing from your previous blue post about the matter???
Do you have any idea how much effort the community has put into the spec as it is currently designed? Weeks of theorycrafting by the smartest people and studying of the rotation by the players. Now we find ourselves having to rebuild everything from scratch while losing a state of the spec that, FOR ONCE, was actually fun. Blizzard has once again shown that it doesn’t listen to the community. How hard would it have been to simply nerf the damage of the spec instead of its playability? Does it take a genius to figure that out? Seriosuly. Blizzard has lost countless points in my eyes lately. I’m increasingly discouraged by the quality of decisions coming from Blizzard and coding from the developers (take a look at the endless number of class bugs we still have out of the beta or the state of the AH right now). My feedback is: listen to the community if you want to keep this game alive.
Stop, messing, with, the, double, dipping, mechanic!!
Introduce it as a tooltip and nerf our damage. But DON’T MESS with our rotation 2 weeks into the expansion!
Have had a load of fun playing Arcane all week, don’t nerf us by destroying the core gameplay loop sunfury gave us. Slap a massive aura nerf on us or just slash the Burden of Power buff itself or something but don’t do this.
Tanks have burst AOE at the very beginning, it is never maintained through the whole fight
I’m sure Hunters will get some love & attention at some point, but it’s just not right now with this tuning patch. Maybe they’ll get something once Season 1 begins and the developers responsible for class balancing with finally see the numbers and get that corrected or… they have an intern in charge of Hunters now, which means you’re all screwed for the whole expansion.
If tanks have issues with keeping threat(i dont tank so i dont know much about this) than that should definitely be addressed, just as much as bm aoe has to be addressed.
if you have a dps that hits like a truck it can be difficult. You need to do a certain amount of dmg or the mob is just gone.
On one mob thats okay, you can taunt, but if its multiple mobs you are in trouble.
And yes. DDs should do more dmg, i said that.
I just dont like the idea of “holding aggro with dmg”… Iam no Dmg Dealer…
Most of our trinkets didnt even provide defensives… They give dmg XD Just a wrong world we live in
Just came in to voice my opinion about burden of power double dipping. Disaster of a change, NEEDS to be reverted. Tune the numbers. This makes it seem devs are completely out of tune of their audience. Please not like this
