Arcane Mage? WTF Blizzard

[NPI]

@Keulenkommando: you are right. The difference comes from the shortened burn phase and the lengthened conservation phase. Burn phase is like 2x dps as conserve phase, thats why its rather a nerf than significant a buff.

[Pandacally]

Please explain your Math. 10% more base dmg should still be 10% more effective dmg even after appling any number of multipliers. And that is what Mastery is. A multiplier.

I am afraid you were right. I was double dipping in my calculation thats why I saw a cummulative effect.
So yeah, then these changes seem more likely to be a nerf.

[giniyo]

the "conservation phase" is just unbearable, if its not with the talent and aoe, arcane barrage does negative dps, and arcane missiles sometimes do not proc for 10 AB casts.. how did they think this was a good idea after 2 "buffs" not increasing barrage's damage at all or give it a regen buff

[TLH]

This is the perfect proof that Blizzard is managed by total retards, so much is 100% certain. Nerfing the already worst spec, while deliberately leaving many others blatantly overpowered, instead they waste time buffing the universally hated Frost spec no one likes anyway.
It can be said with certainty now that they clearly have malicious intentions regarding gameplay in this expansion, what a disrepectful steaming dogshit company.

How dare you Lei Shi !!!!!!!!!! FROST FOR LIFE !!!!!!!!!!!

[Fayenoor]

It's still too early to tell guys. I am surprised by the increase in mana cost, but buffs to Arcane Missiles and Arcane Blast (that usually accounts for 50% of our total damage) are pretty substantial. They are basically forcing us to rotate between conservation phases more... we'll see what implications it has in terms of numbers.

Yes, that's the usual story. It is always too early to tell till it is too late to fix. And then we get the we-will-have-to-fix it next expac spiel.

[Woobels]

This is not even a nerf lol.

[Verzen]

1) You wasted your own time. Don't blame Blizzard for your shortcoming.

2) I play a mage every xpac. Arcane has been prevalent for too long. It's nice to get a breath of fresh, fiery air. Try to smell the burning roses.

Wow you must be one of those idiots I keep hearing so much about. So acknowledging a problem (mana) and then complaining when they make the problem worse is just a shortcoming on my part? Uh huh. So it's my fault that they increased the mana by a shit ton. Uh huh.

[smaktat]

Wow you must be one of those idiots I keep hearing so much about. So acknowledging a problem (mana) and then complaining when they make the problem worse is just a shortcoming on my part? Uh huh. So it's my fault that they increased the mana by a shit ton. Uh huh.

It's your fault for not just going with the trend like we do every xpac. You didn't play safe so you blame Blizzard? Like k. Calling someone an idiot just makes you seem like one.

[Verzen]

It's your fault for not just going with the trend like we do every xpac. You didn't play safe so you blame Blizzard? Like k. Calling someone an idiot just makes you seem like one.

"Going with the trend" is incredibly bad game design advice. Why even have specs to choose from if they aren't relatively balanced? Claiming "Just go with the trend" excuses bad game design for what it is.

That's just dumb. Might as well go back to vanilla where all shamans, priests and druids were the healers and you can't spec to anything other than heal spec in raids because their specs weren't useful in raids.

[smaktat]

"Going with the trend" is incredibly bad game design advice. Why even have specs to choose from if they aren't relatively balanced? Claiming "Just go with the trend" excuses bad game design for what it is.

That's just dumb. Might as well go back to vanilla where all shamans, priests and druids were the healers and you can't spec to anything other than heal spec in raids because their specs weren't useful in raids.

Yeah I guess I'd agree if I were still a super edgy 14 year old.

[Deleted]

won't be able to maintain quickening till next burn with the new costs.

You won't even be able to do it on current live in any raid boss fight.

[giniyo]

This is like a 20-30% damage nerf overall when you consider that you won't be able to maintain quickening till next burn with the new costs.

how do you get so many missile procs to do that at all

[Deleted]

Well now when I thought about it, this actually a buff. And I will tell you why.
In my opinion this "nerf" is more like done with the tier set in mind (and maybe the legendary braces, but thats another topic), all tho I really can't understand why they do it now instead of when they release Nighthold in 7.2. I don't know ... maybe there will be some OP mastery gear that drop from Trial of Valor raid?
But now think about it - 2p give 5% more chance to get AM proc and 4p give 1 sec reduction to Evo with each AM cast. So if you have managed to farm 3 relics with AM proc in the end we will end up with (15+6+5)*2=52% chance to proc AM with every AB cast. So with NH gear(potentially will have more mastery) we will spam AMs, that will result in less mana spending and more Evo casts. So without the mana increase we will end up spaming even more ABs, and due scaling, that might lead to switching the relics to AB boost ones and make Arcane even more OP.
So they just gave AB and AM dmg boost, but decided to increase the mana cost per charge to not make the spec too OP and avoid fiery outcry. So yeah in my eyes (now) this seem to be actualy buff. I only don't understand why it is implemented with 7.1 instead with 7.2 and the tier raid.

[Puri]

Well now when I thought about it, this actually a buff. And I will tell you why.
In my opinion this "nerf" is more like done with the tier set in mind (and maybe the legendary braces, but thats another topic), all tho I really can't understand why they do it now instead of when they release Nighthold in 7.2. I don't know ... maybe there will be some OP mastery gear that drop from Trial of Valor raid?
But now think about it - 2p give 5% more chance to get AM proc and 4p give 1 sec reduction to Evo with each AM cast. So if you have managed to farm 3 relics with AM proc in the end we will end up with (15+6+5)*2=52% chance to proc AM with every AB cast. So with NH gear(potentially will have more mastery) we will spam AMs, that will result in less mana spending and more Evo casts. So without the mana increase we will end up spaming even more ABs, and due scaling, that might lead to switching the relics to AB boost ones and make Arcane even more OP.
So they just gave AB and AM dmg boost, but decided to increase the mana cost per charge to not make the spec too OP and avoid fiery outcry. So yeah in my eyes (now) this seem to be actualy buff. I only don't understand why it is implemented with 7.1 instead with 7.2 and the tier raid.

Except that it would be a very bad idea to balance a spec around a set bonus which is not available to those who chose the alternative way of gearing up in m+ dungeons, and your arguing still completely ignores the fact that this is also a major nerf to arcane explosion that responsible for more than 50% damage in m+ dungeons.

[Komman]

It's disappointing that nobody in this thread seems to realize why the mana cost change was needed.

With the latest Savant hotfix and current Mastery stacking, it is possible to reach the 65-70% levels of Mastery. This converts to a damage bonus of 90-95% per Arcane Charge. This is dangerously close to the 100% mana increase per stack. In other words, Arcane Charges is starting to fail at making spells more expensive per damage dealt. This will get worse as we enter Nighthold with higher itemlevel and slight increase in secondaries.

If we continued on this path, any Mastery buff effect or trinket would make it so that higher Arcane Charge spells are more mana efficient than 0 Arcane Charges. Once that happens, the ideal DPS rotation will involve standing around and waiting to cast AB4/AE4 instead of resetting stacks with ABar. That's a disaster.

To create some room for rotational design, they increased the mana cost. Going from 100% to 125% mana increase per Arcane Charge easily adds room for another 50% worth of further Mastery gains. The issue of "it's a nerf" is pretty easy to fix - just change the base coefficient so that Arcane Blast overall does more damage at every level.

What we should do now is obvious: test things, do some math, fix some spreadsheets and sims so we can confirm how much of a nerf or a buff this change is. Then, tweet these numbers to devs, so that they can use it to adjust the base coefficients, such that it ends up being what Celestalon said it should be in the first place: a significant buff.

[Puri]

It's disappointing that nobody in this thread seems to realize why the mana cost change was needed.

With the latest Savant hotfix and current Mastery stacking, it is possible to reach the 65-70% levels of Mastery. This converts to a damage bonus of 90-95% per Arcane Charge. This is dangerously close to the 100% mana increase per stack. In other words, Arcane Charges is starting to fail at making spells more expensive per damage dealt. This will get worse as we enter Nighthold with higher itemlevel and slight increase in secondaries.

I don't see the problem here. It's already more dps efficient to cast at higher stacks, that it also gets more mana efficient with better gear seems like a normal progress. You are still limited by the amount of mana you have, and even if it gets more mana efficient it still is not sustainable.
The problem I agree would be that at one point you have enough mastery to completely skip the conservation phase, but even with 60% mastery and 100% mana increase per charge we are still far away from that.
But that's simply a design flaw from the mastery, it will need to be constantly nerfed throughout the expansion unless they change it (remove the mana reg/increase and adapt mana costs accordingly).
But why would you nerf it now? Arcane is far from being a top spec, even with a plain buff.

[Komman]

I don't see the problem here. It's already more dps efficient to cast at higher stacks, that it also gets more mana efficient with better gear seems like a normal progress. You are still limited by the amount of mana you have, and even if it gets more mana efficient it still is not sustainable.
The problem I agree would be that at one point you have enough mastery to completely skip the conservation phase, but even with 60% mastery and 100% mana increase per charge we are still far away from that.
But that's simply a design flaw from the mastery, it will need to be constantly nerfed throughout the expansion unless they change it (remove the mana reg/increase and adapt mana costs accordingly).
But why would you nerf it now? Arcane is far from being a top spec, even with a plain buff.

I don't think you understood my post.

If it is more mana efficient, it doesn't matter if it is sustainable. You would rather spend all your mana on 4 stack spells, stand around and do nothing when you can't, instead of resetting and spending it on cheaper spells that give you less damage per mana.

This isn't just the death of a conservation phase, but the death of a spec's design. There isn't any obvious analogy, but the closest Frost equivalent I can think is back in WoD prepatch when Frostbolt outscaled FoF-IL, and Mages started ignoring Ice Lance entirely and spammed Frostbolt/Frostfire Bolt. Except in their case, at least they had something to cast for every GCD, which is still better than the problem here.

[Requimortem]

It's still too early to tell guys.

Haha. I have heard this before... oh so many times. Although strangely it was always people telling warlocks that even though the evidence was overwhelming and the end result was exactly what we were worried about. I would laugh harder at Blizzard's decision to screw over mages if not for the fact that my only two classes are warlock and mage and the former has already been ruined by their incompetence.

[Puri]

If it is more mana efficient, it doesn't matter if it is sustainable. You would rather spend all your mana on 4 stack spells, stand around and do nothing when you can't, instead of resetting and spending it on cheaper spells that give you less damage per mana.

I see now, and I agree.
The core argument of this thread yet remains, it still is a nerf and no buff, and also my statement that if they keep the mastery as it is now they will have to nerf it's value troughout the entire xpac, which will keep top equipped players in place yet hit lesser equipped players even harder.

[Deleted]

This isn't just the death of a conservation phase, but the death of a spec's design.

I would welcome that. I think we need a new design because Mythic+ requires more flexible spec.