Arcane plea to devs [Legion]

[Deleted]

Baseline mastery gives 8% mana regen. Based on current levels of stacking secondary stats this could go as high as 40-50% in mythic level gear. That's 40-50% of your entire mana bar refilled every 5 seconds. The current tooltip on AB says 5% of "base mana", clarification might be needed if this is considered part of the mana gained from mastery. Lets do some napkin math to play out a problematic scenario.
...
At 4 stacks of Arcane Charge, AB will cost 80,000(20%) and cast time will be 2 seconds. Base mana is 400,000 and your total with master is 600,000 and your mana regen is 300,000(50%) per 5 or 200,000(50%) per 5 if mastery regen is based off base mana.

You are spending 200,000(50%) mana every 5 seconds for AB, minimally you are regening 200,000(50%) of mana every 5 seconds or at most 300,000(50%) every 5 seconds.

Sorry you asumption is just absurd. Sorry... like completely absurd and has absolutely nothing to do with current game mechanics or those one can assume by using common sense.

Please have a look into your character sheet, if you even play a mage and aren't a coplete troll. Below your spellpower, there is another line showing you your regeneration. EVERY mage knows this regeneration. At the moment it is 15k / 5s regen for mages, improved by haste.
The mastery in Legion will clearly increase THIS regen. To asume we would bet 40% of max mana every 5 sec.... I facepalmed so hard.... Also your other plea to the devs.... I hope they will never implelemt this T18 bonus a s baseline and also won't listen to most of your pleas. It is just plain boring and a procc of a procc....
There a re a lot of things I'd like to see for arcane mages. Devs are on a good way..... PC gone *tumbs up* please also get rid of RoP....

LI2Atronach

Edit:
P.S: Legion mage will be like Cata Mage but without mastery and some utility talents.... if you remeber: Mage armor: 3%? of max mana every 5 sec and int increased max mana..... so just the same as the new mastery... more max mana and more regen....

[Kastiel]

Disagreement is hard for some people to understand or cope with.

After seeing the talents, AM does have interaction with Quickening which will give it more usefulness, but the original point stands that it's usefulness beyond that depends on mastery levels in high end gear. Since the Mastery has been clarified to improve the actual rate of mana regen, this is actually a cause for concern that maybe at high levels of mastery you could in fact just spam AB minimally for 1.5 minutes.

Baseline mastery gives 8% mana regen. Based on current levels of stacking secondary stats this could go as high as 40-50% in mythic level gear. That's 40-50% of your entire mana bar refilled every 5 seconds. The current tooltip on AB says 5% of "base mana", clarification might be needed if this is considered part of the mana gained from mastery. Lets do some napkin math to play out a problematic scenario.

We have 160,000 mana at 100, lets say we have 400,000 at 110. Largely this number is irrelevant.

Arcane Blast is 5% of base mana which is 20,000 and the cast time is 2.2 seconds. Lets assume you have 10% haste because you're stacking mastery, and lets say you have BiS 50% mastery gear.

At 4 stacks of Arcane Charge, AB will cost 80,000(20%) and cast time will be 2 seconds. Base mana is 400,000 and your total with master is 600,000 and your mana regen is 300,000(50%) per 5 or 200,000(50%) per 5 if mastery regen is based off base mana.

You are spending 200,000(50%) mana every 5 seconds for AB, minimally you are regening 200,000(50%) of mana every 5 seconds or at most 300,000(50%) every 5 seconds.

You guys don't see that this might be a problem? I'm not even counting regen gained from using other spells like AM or talented abilities. Even at lower mastery gear levels you just need enough mastery to hold out 1.5 minutes.

Not sure why you quoted me in your response, I'm not the one arguing that our feedback is pointless, I'm stating that we are doing exactly what the Devs asked us to do: give feedback on what they have displayed thus far. And you're further strengthening my standpoint.

-- Edit --

After reading through your post, I had forgotten the first sentence or two of it. My apologies, carry on!

- - - Updated - - -

Also your other plea to the devs.... I hope they will never implelemt this T18 bonus a s baseline and also won't listen to most of your pleas. It is just plain boring and a procc of a procc...

No one is saying to incorporate the T18 set bonus as-is into the Arcane Mage's baseline abilities. That would be absurd. Arcane Mage damage would be unpredictable and all over the place. Theories would go out the window. It's not reliable. We all know this.

We're just stating that we like the idea. It's aesthetically pleasing. It fits the whole "space and time" fantasy aspect that Blizzard is trying to go for. We're opening up portals through space-time to summon random heroes to aid us in battle. That's effing exciting!

So no, no one is saying to have a great portion of our damage rely on a proc of a proc. It would just be nice to incorporate some variation of the T18 set bonus going forward into Legion. Do we have all the answers? No. Can we provide ideas, though? Of course. Perhaps increase the proc chance. Or maybe at 4 Arcane charges, it's a guaranteed summon. Or give us a skill in our talent tree or on our Artifact Weapon that guarantees the summoning of a hero/ally from every use of AM over 15 seconds or so, somewhat like Arcane Power (For the next 15 seconds, your Arcane Missiles guarantee a random ally to assist you in battle for 6 seconds per summoned Ally - 2min CD). Just an idea. As I said before, it fits their fantasy. It'd just be nice to see.

[Komman]

After seeing the talents, AM does have interaction with Quickening which will give it more usefulness, but the original point stands that it's usefulness beyond that depends on mastery levels in high end gear. Since the Mastery has been clarified to improve the actual rate of mana regen, this is actually a cause for concern that maybe at high levels of mastery you could in fact just spam AB minimally for 1.5 minutes.

Baseline mastery gives 8% mana regen. Based on current levels of stacking secondary stats this could go as high as 40-50% in mythic level gear. That's 40-50% of your entire mana bar refilled every 5 seconds. The current tooltip on AB says 5% of "base mana", clarification might be needed if this is considered part of the mana gained from mastery. Lets do some napkin math to play out a problematic scenario.

We have 160,000 mana at 100, lets say we have 400,000 at 110. Largely this number is irrelevant.

Arcane Blast is 5% of base mana which is 20,000 and the cast time is 2.2 seconds. Lets assume you have 10% haste because you're stacking mastery, and lets say you have BiS 50% mastery gear.

At 4 stacks of Arcane Charge, AB will cost 80,000(20%) and cast time will be 2 seconds. Base mana is 400,000 and your total with master is 600,000 and your mana regen is 300,000(50%) per 5 or 200,000(50%) per 5 if mastery regen is based off base mana.

You are spending 200,000(50%) mana every 5 seconds for AB, minimally you are regening 200,000(50%) of mana every 5 seconds or at most 300,000(50%) every 5 seconds.

You guys don't see that this might be a problem? I'm not even counting regen gained from using other spells like AM or talented abilities. Even at lower mastery gear levels you just need enough mastery to hold out 1.5 minutes.

I think your numbers are a bit off again. There is no sane amount of mastery that would make AB spam sustainable. The mana regen gain most likely is multiplicative, not additive. As mentioned before, the goal is to keep your max mana pool and mana regen proportional to each other. Mana regen isn't going to go from say, 1% per second to 5% per second just because you have 4% mastery. If anything, you should be more worried about never casting AB4 right now.

That said, numbers are pointless to argue about, since they get changed dozens of times over beta.

Side note: 4AC AB is 5% * (1 + (4 * 100%)) = 25% base mana, with a cast time of 2.25 * (1 - 4 * 5%) = 1.8 seconds.

[Deleted]

Side note: 4AC AB is 5% * (1 + (4 * 100%)) = 25% base mana, with a cast time of 2.25 * (1 - 4 * 5%) = 1.8 seconds.

As far as i read, perks will be gone and so casttime won't be reduced....
But 25% base manacost for AB is a concern. But I can't rember an exp pac in wich arcane hasn't needed a "hotfix" to be playable. Devs want us to try other specs with the new expansion. I guess arcane will be hardly competitive/balanced at Legion release, like at any other release too.

[zomgDPS]

TLDR:
Three words describe the current iteration of Arcane mage changes for Legion.

These words are: Thoughtless, Cop-out, Directionless.

Sure these words could be regarded as quite 'inflammatory', but that is only because the devs seem to place more weight in how feedback impacts their 'feelings', than actually providing a well thought out design for the spec. If they manage to put their "I'm so triggered so I will ignore all the feedbacks!!1!1 that make me feel bad" Q_Qs aside and actually read and understand the feedback, they may be able to bring Arcane around (though given their track record with both Mages and this spec, it is highly unlikely).

Disclaimer:
Blizz is notorious for not listening to feedback. It is perhaps the only thing they are extremely adept at. Blizz will completely ignore feedback that they do not like, and will propagate feedback that praises them. Anyone who was part of any previous beta will attest to this fact.

Core problem(s) with phase 1 of Legion's Arcane design:

• There is a very clear and obvious disconnect between Blizzard's understanding of the issues Arcane mages face (e.g. in PvP) and their design for the spec. Blizz seems completely clueless as to what it actually is like to play an Arcane mage (e.g. how painfully repetitive and boring it is), which is why their 'proposed design' is not only fragmented and directionless, but also completely random. It seems like Blizz just took random pot shots at disconnected ideas and just farted those onto a talent grid, at least for Arcane. The entire design lacks overall thought, vision, and direction.
  
• Yet again, there is little to no new gameplay in Legion for Arcane mages. Over 90% of the proposed 'new' talents are simply reshuffled talents and/or core spec abilities that are now made into talents. (e.g. Presence of Mind (one of the most iconic Arcane Mage abilities) is now a talent, and being considered as a "new spell" by Blizzard, or the Arcane Barrage perk is now also a talent). Basically, the vast majority of what is being considered *new* for Arcane, is literally stuff that Arcane has had all along as baseline.
  
• The new mastery will be pointless unless the mana per point mastery is extremely large (since it will be pointless if you have raid level mastery and it only increases your mana pool by 2%. This is pointless when ABs cost ~10% a pop). With that in mind, Mana per point of mastery cannot be extremely large, since that would completely eclipse every other stat. In short, Blizz has yet again designed themselves into a hole because they do not understand the reality of Arcane mages. Their new mastery design is self contradicting.
  
• The new mastery will create hard breakpoints for the mastery stat, between which mastery will be practically useless for Arcane mages. This will be because unless the increase in mana will allow you to cast an actual extra Arcane Blast (which costs a TON of mana), it will be pointless unless you can get at least 1 extra AB.
  
• Arcane mages in Legion will be weaker and less versatile than Arcane mages in WoD, since most if not all of the abilities/talents/perks that they had baseline in WoD, are now the supposed *brand new* talents.

Deep dive, Arcane talents:
Tier 1: Arcane Familiar vs Static vs Torrent

• As said, they removed PoM, and replaced it with Static, which only forces Arcane mages to spec into it to gain back functionality which was already baseline.
• Similarly, Torrent is just a baseline effect (original ABr perk) now made into a talent. Yay for "new" talents, right? /facepalm
• Arcane familiar will almost never be taken, since it is pathetic in every situation or scenario compared to the other two. Not to mention, the talent is just another "press this ability on cooldown then forget it even exists", i.e. lazy, cop-out design that has a grand total of zero impact on the gameplay of the spec.

Tier 2: Shimmer vs Cauterize vs Ice Block

• Shimmer is a re-skinned Blazing speed (from the time blazing speed was a crappy proc). Blizz changed Blazing speed from a proc to a controlled spell simply because a proc based escape/defensive spell is a moronic design idea. It seems like Blizz forgot that painful lesson they learned, and have now reintroduced a proc based defensive spell because fuck learning from past mistakes, amirite? /facepalm
• Tier 2 is a perfect example of Blizzard's design of "on this tier, you will have 1 pve talent, 1 pvp talent, and 1 'you are in idiot' talent". Shimmer is the latter, cauterize is for PvE, iceblock is for PvP (not to mention, another baseline spell made into a talent).
• This is a perfect example of cop-out tier. Absolutely no effort.

Tier 3: MI vs RoP vs Ice Floes

• The 'reshuffled' tier. Absolutely nothing new or interesting to see here. And yea.. RoP still lives, what more is there to say? How much more proof of how Blizz ignores feedback do you need? Completely lazy design.

Tier 4: Incanter's flow vs Charged up vs WoP

• Why anyone would take WoP over Charged is yet another 'what is Blizzard thinking, how can they be so epic-ly disconnected from how Arcane actually plays??' moment
• Charged Up is the clear winner here. Given that one of Arcane's biggest flaws is its inability to generate Arcane Charges outside of AB, of-course people will take Charged Up.
• Tier 4 is a perfect example of "Lets nerf the spec, then make a talent that reverses the nerf and then call ourselves great designers". They cripple Arcane's ability to generate charges, then give a talent that 'fixes' the problem

Tier 5: Supernova vs RoF vs IW

• Yet another tier of "this talent is for PvE (Supernova) and this talent is for Arena (RoF) and this is for PvP (Ice Ward)". I mean srsly, at this point why even bother having a talent selection when there are clear cut 'bad choices'??
• Supernova is nerfed hard. Only 1 charge.

Tier 6:

• So painfully boring. Nothing new added. No thought needed to use these talents. These talents add exactly zero gameplay to the spec. You could literally erase this entire tier from existence and there will be absolutely no difference on the gameplay of Arcane. Two are passives that you don't even care about and will have zero impact on your gameplay. One is a 'press this button every X seconds'. The sheer amount of boredom and lack of creativity in this tier is kind of disgusting coming from 'professional gameplay designers'.

Tier 7: OP vs Quickening vs AOrb

• The supposed 'ultimate' tier is exactly the same as before.
• The Arcane Blast perk that decreases its cast time is removed. It is then renamed as Quickening, and made into a talent (such a cop-out). Yet another example of taking a baseline ability, making it into a talent, then calling your design *new and interesting*

PvP talents

PvP talents are even more basic and thoughtless than the PvE variants and serve as an even clearer indicator of how clueless Blizz is with respect to how Arcane actually plays in PvP. Not to mention, the added complexity of having an entire PvP talent tier is completely meaningless given how talents are distributed across both trees. There are 'pvp only' talents in the PvE tree, and PvE talents in the PvP tree. Its basic Blizzard thoughtless design madness all over again.

That said, I'll comment on some tiers that are not baseline retarded (e.g. tier 1 is completely retarded since it is your only way to get a PvP trinket, which is a talent choice. How is it is choice when it is mandatory? We will never know...).

Tier 4: Imp SS vs Imp IB vs Temp Shield

• A pointless tier since you will have to take temp shield. Imp SS is useless given how so many buffs cannot be spellstolen anymore, not to mention, a CD on SS defeats the purpose of the spell since buffs/heals will just be reapplied anyway.
• Imp IB is a joke
• Temp Shield is the only option. Can you say "Illusion of choice"?

Tier 5: Conc Power vs ToW vs PoM

• All of these are effects/mechanics Arcane Mages had anyway. conc power is basically a mix between the Arcane pvp set bonus and the major glyph. ToW was an old talent, and PoM is basically the most iconic Arcane mage spell, made into a talent and called "BRAND NEW GAME DESIGN SUCH EFFORT!"

Tier 6: Temp Anomaly vs Mirror Entity vs Mass Invis

• They got rid of GI, and made a crappier version of it the ultimate PvP talent for Arcane. Sometimes I think Blizz is intentionally trolling Mages. But the truth is more that they are just incompetent at design.
• Mirror Entity is a PvE talent (and quite a boring one at that) masquerading as an ultimate PvP talent. Is there a better example of how clueless Blizz is about Arcane?
• Temp Anomaly will obviously be the talent any mage who is interested in PvP will take. Clear cut lack of choice in this tier.

Overall grade for phase 1 of Arcane talent redesign: F - (epic level fail)


Summary review:

• No new gameplay added to the spec. Vast majority of talents are baseline spells made into talents and called "new".
• Lots of gameplay removed from the spec. Some are made into talents and called *new*, while others are completely gone (e.g. Cone of Cold). Hence reducing the overall amount of gameplay available to the spec, relative to every single other iteration of Arcane in the spec's history.
• Core Arcane issues completely unaddressed e.g. lack of mobility, lack of core abilities to generate charges, lack of PvP anything, lack of AoE options, lack of a real niche for the spec, lack of mechanics abilities and gameplay that makes Arcane stand out when compared to other mage specs, etc etc None of it is addressed with the Legion changes.
• Arcane mage talent selection design has devolved to the same old "this talent for pve, this for pvp" in many tiers. The lack of actual meaningful choice makes the entire talent system pointless.
• It is abundantly clear that Blizz put in a grand total of no more than 8 mins over the past 2 years into Arcane mage design for Legion. The sheer and overwhelming lack of any effort to address even a single issue for the spec is far too blatantly obvious.

Sure it is 'still early', but if you think that there will be any major work done on Arcane mages this alpha/beta phase (especially with practically every other class in the game getting massive overhauls), you will be sadly and gravely mistaken.


The core reason that Arcane mage design is so constantly directionless is because Blizz seems to only want to listen to feedback that reinforces their narratives of 'how awesome WoW designers are'.

The sad part is, since Blizz doesn't actually play mages (this is obvious) Blizz is forced to get Mage feedback from mages who don't even play the Arcane spec in any serious way and so, the core feedback that Blizz listens to is biased and ill-informed opinions that are either driven by agendas (the ever present "we must keep spec X down because we want spec Y to 'win'" which is pervasive in the mage community) or by ignorance (the "I'm a frost mage who doesn't really play Arcane, but I will scream "Arcane is fine l2play" at the top of my lungs so that Blizz only focuses on MY spec), and so, Blizz never understands what is wrong, which is why practically all of their 'solutions' are random shots in the dark.


Blizz is clearly phoning it in for Legion, specifically where Arcane is concerned. The legion iteration of Arcane is perhaps the one with the least amount of thought put into it. It is certainly the iteration of Arcane with the least amount of gameplay available.

Blizz's directionless approach to Arcane is also clear to see with their first pass.

So far, things are not looking good for this spec, and given that there are entire classes that are getting overhauled (and so will require the lion's share of designer attention), the chances of Arcane seeing any love for Legion is practically nil.

[Orrin]

As far as i read, perks will be gone and so casttime won't be reduced....
But 25% base manacost for AB is a concern. But I can't rember an exp pac in wich arcane hasn't needed a "hotfix" to be playable. Devs want us to try other specs with the new expansion. I guess arcane will be hardly competitive/balanced at Legion release, like at any other release too.

Um, it's alpha and mana costs are easily adjusted. Also 25% of base mana is not a 25% off all mana, since base mana pool is increased by a percentage by default for all mana using classes. The sky is not falling. Well, at least in this regard.

snip

Love you Zomg. I've written since MoP talents reveal at Blizzcon that it seems that Blizzard is not very interested in Mages. Later I found myself thinking they are uninspired by the staff they dish out for Mages whyle making amazing things for other classes. Nw you added cop-out to my list of epithets that conceern Mages, thanks

[Ironsquidlol]

I think your numbers are a bit off again. There is no sane amount of mastery that would make AB spam sustainable. The mana regen gain most likely is multiplicative, not additive. As mentioned before, the goal is to keep your max mana pool and mana regen proportional to each other. Mana regen isn't going to go from say, 1% per second to 5% per second just because you have 4% mastery. If anything, you should be more worried about never casting AB4 right now.

That said, numbers are pointless to argue about, since they get changed dozens of times over beta.

Side note: 4AC AB is 5% * (1 + (4 * 100%)) = 25% base mana, with a cast time of 2.25 * (1 - 4 * 5%) = 1.8 seconds.

I can admit when I'm wrong, definitely 25%, but it's still BASE mana. With the possibility of 600% mana pool at rank 5 from artifact relics and then mastery is added or multiplied to that. You could cast 30+ AB's in a row WITHOUT accounting for regen, regen from AM procs, etc. That's 54 seconds of AB spamming not accounting for any regen or procs, without needing to reset stacks, that's most definitely a problem imo.

They also buffed AM through artifact passives, and Barrage somewhat. So the concern goes from 1 spell casting for 6 minutes to 2 maybe 3 spell casting for 6 minutes. What other spec does that? I still don't see how that's even remotely fun. Currently the way it stands and without seeing the numbers on the Barrage passive, you will only need to reset stacks for AoE damage.

So you don't think it's possible with AM proc chance passive modifier and weaving supernova GCDs to go 90 seconds without resetting? It invalidates Charged Up and Words of Power in the 4th row of Talents. And it makes Quickening the only valid talent in the last row.

Kinda seems like Evocate is only there for misplay as it stands now.

[Komman]

Ultimately, it's a bit silly to talk about numbers right now, whether it's 25%, 100%, or 600%. Keep in mind that when WoD beta launched, Incanter's Flow had a baseline value higher than that of Arcane Power, Frost Bomb exploded for more than Ice Nova, Unstable Magic had a 50% proc rate, Living Bomb had a 150% explosion coefficient, Scorch did higher DPS than Fireball, and Mirror Images hit 4 times as hard as the player. The obvious mathematical outliers never live past tuning. That's why I'm not particularly worried about seeing 7 digit Ignite ticks, even if all beta numbers point that way right now. Arcane is just as obvious; it's pretty easy to make it so we don't spam AB very long. It's not even a new problem, because we've seen it in Cata before.

The mathematical issues that usually end up becoming issues are the subtle ones. Things like whether they can convince us into a "save mana for trinket procs" rotation, instead of a greedy "use mana ASAP" rotation. Things like whether Ignite can be tuned not spread exponentially, but feel like a convincing wildfire. Things like Icicles and Mastery being balanced, despite affecting only 1 spell before the Artifact but then changed to affect everything. I'm much more worried about those, than I am about things that can be fixed by changing 1 or 2 numbers.