Fixing Arcane and Rune of Power

[WoundedHeart]

I don't know about everyone else, but I miss Arcane. It's always been my favorite mage spec, even in bad times like 5.2. I strongly dislike Frost now, and Fire is sooo RNG dependent that I can't handle it, even with 35% crit.

I am not saying that the Arcane of 5.1 was any better of a design than the current design - 6 stack camping and Scorch weaving should have been foreseen and eliminated, it took away from the spec and caused the 5.2 super nerf. I just want to see the spec come back into practical viability in Throne of Thunder raiding. I use the phrase "practical viability" because Arcane's numbers are actually not in a terrible spot - it scales well and can put out some good damage. It's just not practical for many fights in ToT due to one big problem....

Rune of Power.

If we HAVE to have 90 talents how they are rather than balancing mages without them and changing them altogether, then some serious changes need to be made to RoP in order for arcane to be viable again. And don't tell me Invocation/haste arcane is viable because it's just not. I don't want to make Arcane the clear winner like in 5.3, just make it practical to use. I have a few proposed changes to accomplish this, and they're not even huuuge changes.

1) Make Rune of Power instant cast. The fact that I have to stand still for 1.5 seconds just to make something to stand still in for even longer is just ridiculous. If you're going to force us to turret to even be CLOSE to competitive on the charts, at LEAST let us cast RoP while we're running toward the spot on which we're casting it. Since mobility is the weakest aspect of Arcane, this would help at least a little bit from what I have experienced.

2) Double or even triple the size of Rune of Power. For reals, current RoP is TINY. Many encounter mechanics only require that players sidestep a little bit rather than move really far, so just making RoP bigger could have a huge impact on practicality of using the talent in ToT. For example, oh noes Kazra'jin is charging at me! Current RoP = crap move over here, recast, resume dps. Bigger RoP = sidestep a few yards to the edge of it and continue dps! SO much better. Now consider putting two bigger Runes of Power next to each other!! zomg so much space for movement without recasting/losing dps! All because of a small change.

3) Finally, revert the RoP nerf to mana regen. Bring it back to 100% instead of 75%. This is the only hard number change I'd like to see. In 5.2 live, Arcane needs to stay above 80% mana. Starting at 100% mana and assuming you get 0 missile procs, which happens somewhat often, that means when you get to 4 Arcane Charges, you generally have 92% mana or so (at least my mage at ilvl 508 with like 14% haste does), assuming you stood in RoP the whole time. That means you can cast only ONE, MAYBE two if you're lucky, Arcane Blasts before you dip under 80%. That's just depressing, i can only sustain my top dps stack count for like 3 seconds? Maybe like 6 seconds if I get a couple Missile procs? I understand and enjoy that Arcane is a mana game, but I really miss the bursty feel of Cata Arcane where I could go crazy Blast spam for a bit and I would like just a liiiittle bit more of that. 25% more mana regen would definitely help out, even if only 1 or 2 more Blasts' worth. I know 5.1 Arcane mana regen was infinite, but that was solely because of Scorch weaving/fishing for missile procs that allowed mana regen to go crazy. The removal of Scorch from Arcane was enough of a nerf to mana regen without the RoP nerf. Bring it back to 100%. Especially considering how difficult it can be to maintain RoP uptime, it needs to be a little more rewarding.

Those are the 3 minor but extremely helpful changes to RoP that I can think of, now I have one or two general Arcane fixes.

1) Remove the cooldown on Arcane Barrage. Scorch is gone. Not only can we not maintain RoP uptime while moving, we no longer have a cheap spell to spam while moving. Currently our movement priority rotation is Barrage>Fire Blast>Ice Lance, also factoring in Ice Floes/PoM if you use those. Does that sound clunky to anyone else? Because believe me, in practice it is EXTREMELY annoying. Come on, Fire can maintain Invocation buff while moving AND spam Scorch all day. Frost can also maintain Invocation and has Ice lance to spam, as well as 2 procs that help out a lot with movement (insta FFB and super crit Ice Lances), as well as Ice Floes talent (even though it's the poor mage's Kil'Jaeden's Cunning or whatever the 90 lock talent is that lets you move and cast always) to help out a little bit if you have no procs. Anyways, the point is Arcane's mobility sucks, at least let us spam Barrage while we desperately run to our next Rune of Power.

2) I thought I had another one come to me here, but I seem to have forgotten it....let me think a sec. I think it had something to do with bombs and aoe. I responded in the mage thread called "All specs - How Do Bombs Make You Feel?" with a rather lengthy post with potential bomb/aoe changes to each mage spec that I think would be much better than the current set up. Go check that out

So that's pretty much the extent of my thoughts here, I'd love to hear some feedback/comments/ideas about my thoughts here. Let's see it!

[Phair]

There are eastern Arcane mages that are completely and utterly OBLITERATING fire/frost US/EU mages on WoL and I sincerely doubt it's mainly because they have an ilevel advantage and the limitations of RoP, they are making it work over there somehow and by the looks of things there are really good results.

[WoundedHeart]

"Utterly OBLITERATING" is an extreme overstatement, the vast majority of World of Logs records show Arcane and Fire pretty close, but remember these are literally the best mages in the world with the best gear available and Arcane and Fire both scale very well. Just because the best mages in the world can take subpar design and perform very well with it doesn't mean the design itself isn't flawed and/or really annoying. Perhaps I shouldn't have entitled this thread "fixing" arcane, but I DID state that Arcane is not "broken" from a damage point of view. It can do good damage, I can do competitive damage as Arcane even at 508 or whatever I am. I just want to get the point across that Arcane is very unpopular compared to Fire/Frost due to RoP, and that these small changes would make Arcane a much friendlier spec to play, with perhaps a minor dps increase. If it ended up being too much dps increase, nerf nether tempest like 5-10%, big deal. TONS of Arcane's damage comes from the fact that its mastery increases NT's damage by so much, which I think is just poor design.

Anyways, future replies, please refer more to what I actually said and give feedback on my ideas, etc. rather than just say "hey these people over here are doing well with Arcane, your ideas are pointless," thanks!

[royals]

There are eastern Arcane mages that are completely and utterly OBLITERATING fire/frost US/EU mages on WoL and I sincerely doubt it's mainly because they have an ilevel advantage and the limitations of RoP, they are making it work over there somehow and by the looks of things there are really good results.

A lot of the high level arcane parses are gaming meters with multidotting, CoC glyph and basically be a dot/melee range mage. Having the bombs buffed + Arcane mastery + CoC glyph can really make things look a lot better than they are. Now, that being said, if you plan your movement well there are a lot of fights where arcane could be good. But in my opinion Arcane is stuck right now as they still are required to be a turrett and if you are actually respecting mechanics in ToT you will be moving quite a bit.

Remember WoL is great data for going through parses and learning thinges, but the "Top" parses usually have things tipped in their favor, i.e. everyone catering to that individual to rank.

[Gronors]

Well ive just tried Arcane last week and honestly its fine dps wise, even on fights like Iron Qon/Durumu and stuff. On durumu it obviously does worse than fire but it does better on other encounters.

[Deleted]

Camon fgs... how can u compete with mages with 540+itemlevel?? TW wow haves such a big advantage that noone takes their parses for real.
Its another dumb move by blizzard and a slap in the face for the EU and USA players.

[Proakryt]

Like its said before the top Arcane parses often are mages tunneling the boss or ignoring mechanics completely to just do straight damage. It works best on 25m bosses but can also be done to a degree in 10m.

Also you can go haste+invocation still and have decent results. RoP is not mandatory for arcane

[Deleted]

Arcane is viable.

http://worldoflogs.com/guilds/191352/

Feel free to browse - not many fights that I'm in at the moment as I'm sitting to allow our other Mage/other casters to gear, but you'll see the general trend that, while I might not top meters and come mid-pack on a few, I'm at the top or near enough on plenty. Arcane is still far less RNG than Fire ever will be, and if you want steady and reliable DPS, Arcane is the way to go, it's just about adapting.

I'm currently (at time of writing) holding top Mage Parse (all 3 specs) (EU&US) on Lei Shen 25N, and I'm finding Arcane to be very competitive with Fire on most fights bar a few, notably Tortos and Durumu. Considering I also hold R17 Fire parse on the same fight from nearly a month ago now, safe to say it's not just me getting blind luck.

A lot of the high level arcane parses are gaming meters with multidotting, CoC glyph and basically be a dot/melee range mage. Having the bombs buffed + Arcane mastery + CoC glyph can really make things look a lot better than they are. Now, that being said, if you plan your movement well there are a lot of fights where arcane could be good. But in my opinion Arcane is stuck right now as they still are required to be a turrett and if you are actually respecting mechanics in ToT you will be moving quite a bit.

Remember WoL is great data for going through parses and learning thinges, but the "Top" parses usually have things tipped in their favor, i.e. everyone catering to that individual to rank.

I don't even use CoC glyph and I'm still getting results.
Contrary to your argument, since the removal of personal buffs in 5.0, top parses are no longer necessarily formed of the entire raid "buffing" one player to an insane level. In Cataclysm, yes, that's what was required to get high ranks. Now though? No.

A tip though, learn how to use and maximise Incanter's Ward. It's a very useful tool on a lot of fights.

[royals]

Serene, while I definitely agree it is viable and possible to rank and/or be competitive as Arcane I think you are mistaking what I am implying. CoC glyph would obviously only be used for AoE fights such as council. Using that fight as an example, mutidotting has always been very strong for haste arcane and even better as mastery arcane. And catering to that individual as well is not just giving them DI/power infusion etc, but allowing them to stand still and nuke while ignoring other mechanics, rotating tricks of the trade on them, allowing them to do things such as always grab a feather on jikun but stay on boss for the feed young buff. There are ways to "Rank" for any fight if you want to cheese it.

Now, I am also not implying yours are "cheesed" and I agree that good IW usage will vastly increase dps (One thing I really should get better at). But my point was a lot of the high end parses for arcane are 1: Asian guilds with higher Ilvl gear 2: Probably boosted by mechanics and/or catered to by the raid for the sake of ranking.

If you are ranking among them without having these things going on, then my hats off to you, you are kicking some butt.


Edit: One thing I would like to add is that looking through your log reports. The rank limit on fights are approx 60-85k for arcane. That is not even remotely consistant with frost or fire. While there is less of a player base playing that spec, I am surprised that not even 200 people have broken 80k+ on jikun normal. Just an observation.

[MrExcelion]

There are eastern Arcane mages that are completely and utterly OBLITERATING fire/frost US/EU mages on WoL and I sincerely doubt it's mainly because they have an ilevel advantage and the limitations of RoP, they are making it work over there somehow and by the looks of things there are really good results.

The secret is they play with 2-20ms connections, and it's huge for channeled spells since you can plop in [nochanneling] and you have nearly zero client-side penalty for spamming your abilities. When Blatty played with Arcane in T14 he had it macro-ed into everything, and I posted a couple top world Arcane parses in ICC when I played with 9-10ms on Fios internet and Shadowburn was based in Dallas.

Latency increasing dps isn't limited to just Arcane either, but it's definitely a huge boost to be able to spam with channeled spells instead of accidentally clipping AM during your time warp/metagem proc. Not to mention if you spam, it frees up additional awareness.

Odds are, people will disagree with me on this and say nochanneling isn't worth it, but it really is if you can get an excellent ping. 80-100+ ms and it might be a different story since thats a lot of extra time tacked onto every AM -> [other spell] transition. It's difficult to really quantify but there's a level of latency where it's definitely viable and levels where it isn't.

Back on the topic of RoP, it's needed some QoL reworks for awhile now, like instant cast, longer duration, getting rid of the targeting reticule, etc.

Whenever I get that amazing 4pc bonus I'll definitely go back Arcane and provide a little more insight as my experience this tier with the spec has been minimal.

[Kodaz]

523 Ilvl and have been running arcane haste/invo the last few weeks through heroic progression, currently 6/12 HM. It's extremely competitive and more to the point, consistent dps on any encounter really. Good QOL and with the legendary meta gem those arcane missile procs are just heavenly. I hated fire even at 40% crit self buffed with 4 piece. Frost doesn't scale well but arcane does. It's a no brainer for me.

[Deleted]

523 Ilvl and have been running arcane haste/invo the last few weeks through heroic progression, currently 6/12 HM. It's extremely competitive and more to the point, consistent dps on any encounter really. Good QOL and with the legendary meta gem those arcane missile procs are just heavenly. I hated fire even at 40% crit self buffed with 4 piece. Frost doesn't scale well but arcane does. It's a no brainer for me.

What kind of rotation are you using as Haste/Invo and possible to link any logs?

[Wobe]

Arcane is VERY viable in it's current state, there is really only one fight where Fire really outperforms Arcane by a significant amount (Tortos). You hear alot of complaints about the level 90 mage talents, but in all honesty they may need some tweaking but overall they are fairly decent. We are given a choice, Rune of Power if you are able to plant and turret most of the fight, Incanter's Ward if heavy movement is required, and Invocation if there are several things throughout the fight that require bursting immediately in which you will use a significant amount of mana on a fairly often basis. I agree that some of the numbers may need to be twerked to make all of the talents closer in terms of DPS, but everything can't be perfect.

Some ideas that I would like to see put into motion in terms of our Level 90 Talents are:

1) Enlarging the size of rune of power, maybe .5x it's current size.
2) Make Evocation castable while moving when you spec into Inovcation to go along with the reduced cast time.
3) Give us some kind of shield that will proc along with Incanter's Absorption for slightly more survivability with this talent choice.

To be honest, the mage classs is in a fairly nice spot as far as damage. The problem with the mage class is we have mediocre survivability compared to most classes. That coupled with the fact that we bring no sort of Raid CD's or buffs makes us less desirable than say Warlocks or Boomkins. Why bring a mage when you can bring a Boomkin to do very similar damage while gaining a Tranquility and Battle Rez. Granted there are situations where this is not true, but for the most part, we need something we can contribute to the raid. If we are denied this, then our damage definately needs a significant buff to make it worth bringing 3 mages again to encounters.

[Thelxi]

Blizzard should admit their failure and completely scrap the current 75 and 90 talent tiers. It would fix a whole lot.

[Soulstrike]

What kind of rotation are you using as Haste/Invo and possible to link any logs?

its just AB/AM until you get to 20%ish mana then evocate back to full, you will never lose invocation buff cause you will be losing mana alot faster than in a minute

not my log but heres one www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-jpd2u4p703oyxt43/

i believe he was crit gemmed and haste reforged and its pretty good result i must say

[Vaelkder]

I'd like to see your build/talents/glyphs/rotations, please. I miss playing Arcane, as it was the only Spec with which I felt comfortable.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!


This was a reply to the post by KODAZ

Thank you!

[Phair]

Arcane is VERY viable in it's current state, there is really only one fight where Fire really outperforms Arcane by a significant amount (Tortos).

I'm curious if you've attempted to play Arcane on Durumu Nmezus? Can the damage to icewalls be competitive with combustion spread?

The secret is they play with 2-20ms connections, and it's huge for channeled spells since you can plop in [nochanneling] and you have nearly zero client-side penalty for spamming your abilities. When Blatty played with Arcane in T14 he had it macro-ed into everything, and I posted a couple top world Arcane parses in ICC when I played with 9-10ms on Fios internet and Shadowburn was based in Dallas.

Huh...I would be VERY interested to know exactly how this works in a macro.

[royals]

Huh...I would be VERY interested to know exactly how this works in a macro.

#showtooltip /cast [nochanneling:Arcane Missles] Arcane Blast
#showtooltip /cast [nochanneling:Arcane Missles] Arcane Barrage

What it does is check with the server to see if you are channeling that specific spell, if you are not you will cast the spell at the end of the macro.

The point (and downside) that MrExcelion was making is that since it has to ping the server (are you channeling) then ping again to cast it essentially doubles your MS. If you have super low MS then yay its amazing and you should put it in all of your spells, if not it sucks huge ones.

[Vaelkder]

What would you consider as "super low MS?" I'm in Portland Oregon with a rock-steady latency of 63/65 ms, and I would enjoy researching how viable it might be to use these macros.

[Phair]

#showtooltip /cast [nochanneling:Arcane Missles] Arcane Blast
#showtooltip /cast [nochanneling:Arcane Missles] Arcane Barrage

What it does is check with the server to see if you are channeling that specific spell, if you are not you will cast the spell at the end of the macro.

The point (and downside) that MrExcelion was making is that since it has to ping the server (are you channeling) then ping again to cast it essentially doubles your MS. If you have super low MS then yay its amazing and you should put it in all of your spells, if not it sucks huge ones.

Nice I like it!