[Arcane] General Feedback and general dislike of the feel of Arcane in live

[yarafx1]

So the warlocks all came together and brought good points across the WOW community so can we do the same for Arcane?

I've been very disappointed in the overall game play, mana regeneration and overall feel of the current Arcane spec. I feel like I cant actively play the class out side burst windows then am 100% starved for Mana, not to mention pulling 80-100k more dps as a fire. My fire set is currently 842 Arcanes 846 prioritizing simmed stat weights. Overall the class feels clunky and just not fun. I've attempted to run it in dungeons and as soon as the trash pulls are done I am OOM and having to sit down and eat? This doesn't feel right, if nothing else can Dev increase out of combat regeneration so we can not have our groups wait on us to recoup mana. Feels bad.

Has anyone seen actual success in Mythic dungeons or dungeons at all with Arcane?

Is it something I should just suck up and let go and stick to playing the proc spec that is fire.

It also seems awful that the best rotation we have currently is spamming arcane explosion and stacking quicking with Nethertempest being spammed.

Any feed back from any and everyone would be nice.

[Cazlar]

Arcane is super fun in short stints on single target, super fun for days on AoE. Yes it can work, yes it is broken and needs love badly. AoE is supported by Arcane Rebound and Resonance abilities, between the two you can do 400-500k on multitraget fights or trash with little to no issues with mana. Single target the rotation burns out after about 90-110 seconds depending on procs of Arcane Missiles, entering a long and dull conserve phase that never really lines up well again.

What it needs: Either a shorter cooldown on Evocate from a weapon talent, a buff to the mana regen part of the mastery, some sort of third method of getting smaller amounts of mana back (see incredible kilt legendary or mana gems like Aldoli said), or simply adjust the mana values to make it less consuming to cast spells at four charges.

I would be 100% in support of doing whatever it takes to draw attention to these issues and getting it in from of Blizzards dev teams.

[Deleted]

Arcane is actually amazing in dungeons, the burst AoE they have with RoP > Mark of Aluneth > 4 AC Barrage with Resonance and Rebound puts you in the millions of dps, and the whole 4 AE > Abarr AoE rotation is mana neutral, so you aren't oom like you say you are. Not to mention it goes up much faster than Fire, which relies on Ignite spreading on itself and ticking for a few moments.

Single target isn't bad in dungeons since bosses doesn't last long enough for our slow conserve phase to dip down our overall damage, the initial ~40-50 seconds of just spamming Blast and Missiles are amazing ST Dps, without lust I regularly float around 270k dps with 845 ilvl.

Don't know what you've seen or read, but spamming AE and NT for max quickening stacks is only better when you can reach 100 stacks and keep it for a while, something that needs a 5+ minute long fight, something that isn't possible in dungeons. And I can assure you this won't last long until blizz fix it.

[yarafx1]

Arcane is actually amazing in dungeons, the burst AoE they have with RoP > Mark of Aluneth > 4 AC Barrage with Resonance and Rebound puts you in the millions of dps, and the whole 4 AE > Abarr AoE rotation is mana neutral, so you aren't oom like you say you are. Not to mention it goes up much faster than Fire, which relies on Ignite spreading on itself and ticking for a few moments.

Single target isn't bad in dungeons since bosses doesn't last long enough for our slow conserve phase to dip down our overall damage, the initial ~40-50 seconds of just spamming Blast and Missiles are amazing ST Dps, without lust I regularly float around 270k dps with 845 ilvl.

Don't know what you've seen or read, but spamming AE and NT for max quickening stacks is only better when you can reach 100 stacks and keep it for a while, something that needs a 5+ minute long fight, something that isn't possible in dungeons. And I can assure you this won't last long until blizz fix it.

I agree that Aracane is good at AOE, but being mana starved during / directly after trash packs is not very fun.

Also not sure if 4 AE > Abarr is Mana Neutral I know that the 4 AB > Abarr is not any longer unless you have the Legendary that gives you the refund.

It's sad it seems like Arcane will be great if you get both legendary items that increase mana regeneration. I am nearly 90 hours into legion and haven't even been in a dungeon or group with a person that's received one. (Given I watched a streamer get two in the same mythic, their same mythic ha)

[Nitros14]

I'm doing very well in mythic dungeons. Burst aoe and cleave is strong, on short fights you can keep quickening the entire time.

I like the mechanics a lot, way more fun than before.

I recently picked up arcane rebound, which is actually quite a lot of damage when aoe-ing but wanting to conserve mana. Barrage cleave already does a ton with resonance.

[Ponkster]

Please don't spread mis-information.

Arcane is fantastic and competitive. Yes fire might have it outclassed but its still a good spec and you only run oom if you're not playing it right.

Frost might need some love.

[Cazlar]

you only run oom if you're not playing it right.

Umm...really? Yes in a mythic dungeon you only go oom if you fuck something up pretty bad but that's because the boss fights are only about 90 seconds, with exception to those with time consuming mechanics. Right now with the goal being to keep Quickening stacks at all times and Nether Tempest rolling it feels like the only way to achieve that is to drastically slow down the rotation, to the point of not really participating in anything except keeping your stacks

I've made 40 stacks of Quickening without slowing down a few times, but in any fight over the 90 second marker its very clunky. And does Nether Tempest along, even with 100 stacks of quickening, going to make up for basically just taping the target to maintain stacks?

I'll play around some more when I get home, but the first several 300 second tests I ran were very meh, though I will try some with a focus on maintaining quickening at all costs.

[Rawwrz]

I've had somewhat ok results with arcane 844 ilvl/868 artifact with rebound. The mass on-deman aoe is a big plus. Single target is decent/good. I've tried both the quickening at all cost play style and run of the mill arcane. I agree with the post about the quickening at all cost feeling very odd and slow. If def feels out of place.

I had full intentions of playing Arcane but I've ran into the group finder brick wall. I play at odd times so I can't get with guild groups for mythic. Everyone is brainwashed that if you don't play Fire, WW, Priest you are worthless or you have to be 850 ilvl to compensate for it. So I'm being forced to focus on fire. Feelsbadman so much AP into Arcane.

[Deleted]

I've been very disappointed in the overall game play, mana regeneration and overall feel of the current Arcane spec.

Well, I'm afraid Arcane mages were fooled big time. How do you extend Arcane Blast cast time from 2.0 s to 2.25 s and remove all speeding effects without a riot? It's easy, the trick will include Draenor Perks and when that expansion is over...

But it is basically the same problem as always. If Arcane is not the top spec in a single-target patchwerk fight then very few will play it in raids. Because there are no patchwerk fights.

[kheath812]

Please don't spread mis-information.

Arcane is fantastic and competitive. Yes fire might have it outclassed but its still a good spec and you only run oom if you're not playing it right.

Frost might need some love.

sorry but being worse than another spec which is also worse than many other classes is not fantastic nor is it competitive. fun =/= good.

[Keulenkommando]

Im still in the 820 Range with my Mage so I wont comment on any numbers but only on the actual playstile.

I very mutch like Arcane as it is now. The AoE is great, Mark of Aluneth feels like a real awesome ability.

The only thing with Arcane that realy bothers me is the ooc Mana regeneration. In current normal, hero and mythic the ogogogog mentality of speed running everything realy gets in the way of the arcanemage need to replenish its mana reservs to be fully efficient. Usually I am still sitting and drinking when the Tank allready pulls the next mob or even pulls the boss.
In Mythic+ this will be a even bigger problem. Why take a arcan mage when the fire mage is ready to go again as soon as the last mob is dead.

My suggestion would be that the Arcane Mage gets a new passive that increses the Mana gain from conjured food by 100-300% or a spell that consumes 1 conjured food and can only be used while ooc so he can regain Mana between Trashmobs fast without slowing down the group.

[Deleted]

I’ve been running mythics on my mage at a decent item level (840+) and my initial thoughts are that we are strong on AOE trash, but weak on longer single target fights.

On trash I am using every opportunity possible to eat between fights, I normally get through at least one stack of Mage food per dungeon (even if it’s just to eat for a couple seconds in between pulls). So I am unsure how well this will play out once you start running mythic ++

On longer Single target fights where we need to do any form of conserve phase we just seem weak and I am unable to keep up with my similarly geared guildies. Unfortunately I can only see this getting more pronounced once we reach a raid environment.

The only faint hope I can see on the horizon is the pure luck in getting the legendary legs to drop, the mana regen combined with charged-up could significantly lessen the pain of the conserve stage on single target and just generally improve the mana position on trash packs.

[Antonin]

Yeah, I'd agree that everything feels great except longer single-target fights. And, this is something that both our legendaries and our tier set bonus is designed to fix. I don't think that's the best solution, as those are RNG and the set bonus won't be out for a while, but it seems pretty clear that this is a temporary problem nonetheless. So I'll stick with it. If you enjoy the playstyle, it's already quite strong in Mythics with consistently the highest AoE damage of casters (with a nearly mana-neutral rotation). In raids, at least for the first few weeks until you get a legendary, it may be difficult to pull competitive DPS on longer fights.

[yarafx1]

Yeah, I'd agree that everything feels great except longer single-target fights. And, this is something that both our legendaries and our tier set bonus is designed to fix. I don't think that's the best solution, as those are RNG and the set bonus won't be out for a while, but it seems pretty clear that this is a temporary problem nonetheless. So I'll stick with it. If you enjoy the playstyle, it's already quite strong in Mythics with consistently the highest AoE damage of casters (with a nearly mana-neutral rotation). In raids, at least for the first few weeks until you get a legendary, it may be difficult to pull competitive DPS on longer fights.

Though I agree (Ran mythics last night as Arcane) vs fire and switched to fire for bosses the AOE is strong though I really don't think its as easy as Casting Living bomb and a few spells, the biggest contention here is when you need to focus down priority targets then you are sitting near OOM. Having a group wait on you is the worst.

I agree that the legends help the classes problems significantly. BUT in saying that isn't that a really big deal. Like the class becomes fun and very viable with Legends?

The biggest perk I see of using Arcane for Mythic and Mythic + is that you don't have to worry about pulling random Neutral targets due to ignite spreading to them which is a whole other issue in itself.

[Selastan]

I like the feel of Arcane, but I don't like the flavor of it. When you get Rule of Threes to proc more than one time in a row...but throwing around purple fireballs as our main attacks just doesn't feel right. Maybe a channeled spell or just a normal frost/fire/both? bolt. Also give us a ranged aoe instead of arcane explosion. It doesn't feel right running into the center of a fight as a mage. A buffed up channeled version of nether tempest would be cool, or a version of paladins' Execution sentence with a star instead. Throw in a random chance to open portals or cause some sort of chaotic rift when our attacks hit and you would capture that feel of attempting to control something beyond control.

For the record, I loved the scenario where you control Illidan under the service of Lord Ravencrest. THAT is what an arcane mage should feel like!

[schwarzkopf]

I agree that Aracane is good at AOE, but being mana starved during / directly after trash packs is not very fun.

AE x4, ABar x 1,repeat -> awesome dps, no cooldowns, stay at high mana. Also all instant spells, so you can move around and stay out of the way of crap really easy.

[Deleted]

I personally found it OK in beta (was on it for 2-3 weeks) but it was awkward, hard to manage, generally "classic arcane". The thing with fire is that it's just very much easier to use. And if the theoretical max you can reach is generally better on fire, it wouldn't make sense to not use it.

[kheath812]

AE x4, ABar x 1,repeat -> awesome dps, no cooldowns, stay at high mana. Also all instant spells, so you can move around and stay out of the way of crap really easy.

worse than just spamming arcane explosion on trash. whats the point in playing arcane if you have to do less damage intentionally just to reserve mana? you might as well play fire at that point.

[schwarzkopf]

...than just spamming arcane explosion on trash.

Better actually.... the ABar hits 5 targets for crap loads. Most packs are 4 or 5 - so it works out well.
Also - no point dpsing in such a way such that you slow down or have to stop.
Also - Artefact abilities enhance the ABar even further.

[kheath812]

Better actually.... the ABar hits 5 targets for crap loads. Most packs are 4 or 5 - so it works out well.
Also - no point dpsing in such a way such that you slow down or have to stop.
Also - Artefact abilities enhance the ABar even further.

arcane explosion with 4 ac does more damage than using one 4 ac barrage every once in a while. you dont have to slow down even if you use all your mana. weve never had to stop for mana in my mythic groups. i could see how that would be a problem if your group was just doing bad damage though.