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  1. #881
    Deleted
    Hello guys,

    I wanted to know for the redesign of our spells is so long? all classes have already been made and not us ... Blizzard does not care about our mouth?

    Sorry for my very bad english

  2. #882
    Couple of questions.The best opener right now on beta is 2AB+Arcane Orb+mark+rune+AR? If you are not running Quickening do you just spam AB? If you are using WoP, do you just treat the conserve phase like it is on live (stay around 85% mana)?

  3. #883
    Why cast Arcane Orb after 2 ABs? If you use it first, you skip on the two weakest casts of Arcane Blast.

  4. #884
    So Fire feels a lot more fun to play than Arcane. I haven't done much at 110 as a mage, so which do you guys think is better in general right now? We're gonna have to pick because Blizzard likes this artifact power design even though it's complete cancer, so what's the verdict?

  5. #885
    When did Rule of Threes turn into a major trait and Aegwynn's Ascendance turn into a minor?

  6. #886
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Plastkin View Post
    So Fire feels a lot more fun to play than Arcane.
    Was it ever different? Arcane only feels at home on Patchwerk. I always remembered it was the spec that needed that most maintenance on complex fights since at least 4.0 which is ironic since it was always blamed as the "11111111" spec.

  7. #887
    Quote Originally Posted by tobindax View Post
    Was it ever different? Arcane only feels at home on Patchwerk. I always remembered it was the spec that needed that most maintenance on complex fights since at least 4.0 which is ironic since it was always blamed as the "11111111" spec.
    I just mean that when I was leveling on alpha I had no idea how Arcane would play at all. Overpowered seemed really RNG based and not very strong, even considering the artifact nodes. Arcane Orb felt meh, and Quickening seemed like the most interesting thing, but if you do play it to max your stacks it's incredibly awkward. There's a really clear and obvious way to play Arcane in WoD and there's a very clear way to play Fire in Legion, and both feel pretty natural.

    Ideally Fire is the stronger and most generally useful (good for dungeons and cleave fights which are the norm). If Arcane is preferred because it has a higher throughput just because of scaling/balance reasons, I'd be pretty annoyed playing it.

  8. #888
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Plastkin View Post
    I just mean that when I was leveling on alpha I had no idea how Arcane would play at all. Overpowered seemed really RNG based and not very strong, even considering the artifact nodes. Arcane Orb felt meh, and Quickening seemed like the most interesting thing
    I suspect you are talking only about single target there and possibly on low HP targets on levelling. That's not how that row works. The orb is the strongest AOE spell, one of the most important in the class about it and we know this from live (it works mainly indirectly and in the long term/medium term), Overpowered appears to shine better on BL or generally during a high HP target burn and Quickening will probably be the highest sustained damage but I get the impression it will be lower burst damage because it wouldn't make sense otherwise as a row.

  9. #889
    High Overlord AngelovV's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by tobindax View Post
    Overpowered appears to shine better on BL or generally during a high HP target burn and Quickening will probably be the highest sustained damage but I get the impression it will be lower burst damage because it wouldn't make sense otherwise as a row.
    It wouldn't, but that is the way it is. Quickening is better for both sustained damage and burst, while OP is pretty crappy and orb is just orb... it is good for solo play, trash or heavy add fights.

  10. #890
    Quote Originally Posted by whisperingsage View Post
    When did Rule of Threes turn into a major trait and Aegwynn's Ascendance turn into a minor?
    It's been that way for awhile now. A month or so maybe? I think they lowered the damage on AA when they did it as well.

  11. #891
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by AngelovV View Post
    It wouldn't, but that is the way it is. Quickening is better for both sustained damage and burst, while OP is pretty crappy and orb is just orb... it is good for solo play, trash or heavy add fights.
    Hah? Why would you Quickening in a short fight during Bloodlust? Also why do you dismiss orb so fast when we know its AOE contribution indirectly, is enormous.

    Tuning is not over yet so you can't say for sure either way but mechanically-wise, I don't see another combo, though I'd welcome ideas in terms of that.

  12. #892
    Quote Originally Posted by Plastkin View Post
    I just mean that when I was leveling on alpha I had no idea how Arcane would play at all. Overpowered seemed really RNG based and not very strong, even considering the artifact nodes. Arcane Orb felt meh, and Quickening seemed like the most interesting thing, but if you do play it to max your stacks it's incredibly awkward. There's a really clear and obvious way to play Arcane in WoD and there's a very clear way to play Fire in Legion, and both feel pretty natural.

    Ideally Fire is the stronger and most generally useful (good for dungeons and cleave fights which are the norm). If Arcane is preferred because it has a higher throughput just because of scaling/balance reasons, I'd be pretty annoyed playing it.
    Arcane is only obvious in WoD because we spent the time to figure it out. We'll do the same in Legion once tuning has approached some sort of final state.

  13. #893
    Arcane definitely looks more interesting. I like how the AOE capability is added to arcane which has always been a single target dpsing spec. I am definitely looking forward to seeing finalbosstv's 2nd pass video of the arcane mage with the artifact. I really want to see how the class is now during beta which should give us a pretty good indication of how it will be during live. I am speculating not really much changes anymore, just some minor changes. Still got a long way to go until live so we'll see.

  14. #894
    Quote Originally Posted by Frost1129 View Post
    Arcane is only obvious in WoD because we spent the time to figure it out. We'll do the same in Legion once tuning has approached some sort of final state.
    I disagree with that, it was fairly obvious from the moment I made a mage. The only questions I had then were about when was it optimal to use PoM (during slow initial AB casts or to get an extra AB on your crystal) or haste vs mastery, etc. Rotationally it was pretty much exactly as I expected just reading the abilities/mastery.

    Fire is currently that way. It plays pretty much exactly as you expect after using the abilities a few times and understanding what's going on.

    I don't get the same sense from Arcane. It's either unbelievably dull and lacks an actual mechanic, or you use the haste 100 talent and I have no idea wtf you're supposed to do with that.

  15. #895
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Plastkin View Post
    I disagree with that, it was fairly obvious from the moment I made a mage.
    Hah? Without people like Frost1129 to code the simcraft scripts, we would have no idea about the 93% and 50% mana breakpoints. Ironically we still don't know much about it since I bet most players don't know those breakpoints are not the same on multiple targets.

    The mastery is voodoo in general on live and I hope its change will make the spec more intuitive.

  16. #896
    Quote Originally Posted by tobindax View Post
    Hah? Without people like Frost1129 to code the simcraft scripts, we would have no idea about the 93% and 50% mana breakpoints. Ironically we still don't know much about it since I bet most players don't know those breakpoints are not the same on multiple targets.

    The mastery is voodoo in general on live and I hope its change will make the spec more intuitive.
    I just reasoned about when to barrage by doing the math to see how much mana you'd use by casting 4 consecutive ABs, so always cast another AB if barraging would waste mana, basically.

    That's at least an actual mechanic -- you need to maintain high mana. That seemed fairly intuitive. Now your mastery is just mana regeneration + mana cap, which doesn't really inform gameplay.

  17. #897
    Quote Originally Posted by Plastkin View Post
    I disagree with that, it was fairly obvious from the moment I made a mage. The only questions I had then were about when was it optimal to use PoM (during slow initial AB casts or to get an extra AB on your crystal) or haste vs mastery, etc. Rotationally it was pretty much exactly as I expected just reading the abilities/mastery.

    Fire is currently that way. It plays pretty much exactly as you expect after using the abilities a few times and understanding what's going on.

    I don't get the same sense from Arcane. It's either unbelievably dull and lacks an actual mechanic, or you use the haste 100 talent and I have no idea wtf you're supposed to do with that.
    Yeah, I'm sure you knew immediately to conserve above ~85% mana, burn only to 50%, and interrupt evo half way through and waste half of its potential >.>. You had to do math to figure it out, at least. None of it was "intuitive" or "obvious".

  18. #898
    Quote Originally Posted by Plastkin View Post
    I just reasoned about when to barrage by doing the math to see how much mana you'd use by casting 4 consecutive ABs, so always cast another AB if barraging would waste mana, basically.

    That's at least an actual mechanic -- you need to maintain high mana. That seemed fairly intuitive. Now your mastery is just mana regeneration + mana cap, which doesn't really inform gameplay.
    That's fair if you already made the assumption that you should stay at high mana. What in game suggests that you should do that, instead of permanently surfing at 4 Arcane Charges? Arcane Charges increase the damage of your spells so much more than mana adept, so how do you know that mana adept takes priority? How would you know that instead of spending your entire mana bar, you should only use half of it before you Evocate? If you've run into Arcane Mages in LFR, you'll notice that those tendencies are exactly what many of them do. They'll just never use Arcane Barrage, and then Evocate when the cooldown is finished.

  19. #899
    Quote Originally Posted by Frost1129 View Post
    Yeah, I'm sure you knew immediately to conserve above ~85% mana, burn only to 50%, and interrupt evo half way through and waste half of its potential >.>. You had to do math to figure it out, at least. None of it was "intuitive" or "obvious".
    That's exactly how you'd play it if you just read the mastery and played with it for a few minutes?

    Virtually every spec in this game is this way. A spec where you read every ability and level it to 110, then play with it for a while and still have no clear understanding on how the spec should be played means you've found a confused spec that's poorly designed. The only other spec I've seen now out of 15+ of them that's remotely close to as confused as Arcane is Balance.

    Quote Originally Posted by Komman View Post
    That's fair if you already made the assumption that you should stay at high mana. What in game suggests that you should do that, instead of permanently surfing at 4 Arcane Charges?
    Mastery + reading comprehension.

    Quote Originally Posted by Komman View Post
    Arcane Charges increase the damage of your spells so much more than mana adept, so how do you know that mana adept takes priority?
    Because I can go to a dummy and cast AB until 0% mana and see how much damage is lost, and use basic reasoning to understand that with AP active that I'm going to want as much mana as possible. One CD block and I see that 50-70% or more of my DPS comes from my CD block which means even if mastery didn't give us bonus damage for having higher HP, I'd want to have pooled it anyway to burst harder during CDs.

    This is basically DPS common sense, 101 level play.

    Quote Originally Posted by Komman View Post
    How would you know that instead of spending your entire mana bar, you should only use half of it before you Evocate?
    You wouldn't unless you're bad because the ring is a thing. If you're evoing in a ring you're going to do bad DPS.

    Quote Originally Posted by Komman View Post
    If you've run into Arcane Mages in LFR, you'll notice that those tendencies are exactly what many of them do. They'll just never use Arcane Barrage, and then Evocate when the cooldown is finished.
    I don't really care what people do in LFR, because most of those people don't even spend every GCD they have or play anywhere close to optimally, regardless of how simple a spec is. No matter how simple, people still do half or less of what they could do in their gear, so I don't think looking at them is a good example of how intuitive something is. Most of those people haven't actually tried to understand their specs, or even read everything in their spellbook, and most probably haven't even looked up a guide and tried to copy the guide perfectly either.

    I read everything the game tells me about a spec including every ability/talent, come up with a basic priority for the abilities, and then tweak things later when I sit down and do the math to figure out optimal play from things that aren't obvious. So within about an hour I'll be 90-95% of what you can do with a spec and the rest of the time is just figuring out the tiny improvements that aren't obvious, or trying out various talents that on paper are very close. Knowing to pool mana because you have a CD block that involves burning a huge amount of mana and evo that's synced with it, and a mastery that gives you more damage when you have more mana is pretty high up on the "it's pretty obvious how to play this" scale.

    Those minor things aren't even things people in top 100 guilds pick up. I still see druids in those guilds use terrible openers for Balance because they haven't realized that the ring gives you 104.5% more damage and just carry on doing their old BRF rotation. No guide explains this well either, but if you think about what order to use abilities to maximize your damage over 15 seconds, it's completely obvious.

    If you want to talk about unintuitive top DPS rotations/priorities, try getting something that isn't really easy to figure out with high school math and building a deterministic combat simulator and searching the space of options with a simple DFS or BFS. You can use tons of stuff from AI theory to make the search faster, but you end up with 100% optimal play over some time period with no explanation as to why that series was optimal.

  20. #900
    Quote Originally Posted by Plastkin View Post
    You wouldn't unless you're bad because the ring is a thing. If you're evoing in a ring you're going to do bad DPS.
    Ah, I understand now. Yeah, I guess it does seem rather straight forward if you've always had the ring dictating how to play. It also kind of explains why you don't follow why I asked that. Unfortunately, Arcane has been played a lot longer than patch 6.2, and people have had to figure out what to do for the previous 9 patches without it.

    The search for an optimal rotation with mana adept is hardly as simple as using DFS or BFS and calling it a day. People have tried minimax approaches, closed loop formulation using Markov Chains, and if you look a little further back in history, genetic programming. Sadly, some of those writings aren't accessible right now with the old EJ forums being down.

    If you've never experienced all that and only played when life was dictated by an orange ring, I'm sorry. You've missed out on better times.

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