Hows Arcane in legion?

[Thundering]

I tried out my mage now again for a while and noticed i really liked arcane, i wounder is arcane good for pve?

[Nezek]

In my opinion Arcane looks like the skill cap has been raised to the all time high.

I have always had this argument in the past with people that tell me Arcane is easy and for noobs etc, one button rotation etc, however in the last few expansions mastering Arcane at end game raiding levels (heroics, mythics whatever you want to call it from then until now), has been extremely challenging.

I can see Arcane being openly very challenging now more than ever, the mana resource looks really difficult to manage, movement etc seems to have improved a little which was always a problem until the introduction of Ice Floes which in my opinion is the best Mage spell to ever grace us, but overall with the quickening effect which will need to be mastered at end game content, so many new variables and the artifact weapons routes and choices, build potential and outs, I think all specs are viable, Arcane will be viable, just hard to be a beast with (maybe not for casual players, but certainly in progression guilds at end game content and cutting edge material).

We'll see the most struggles with this at the beginning of the expansion when stats are in the floor and nobody has gear, inevitably it has always been like this >_<

Hope this helped a little.



Peace and love,

Nezek

[Nitros14]

After spending 5 minutes mastering fire I'm pretty interested in arcane in the expansion. High skill cap in deciding when to spend mana to maximize return.

[Northem]

Sadly, Arcane Mages will suffer from many annoyances during Legion... annoyances easily avoidable by the way...

For several months since the alpha started, I have been publishing on this forums both a list of problems that the Arcane Mages will have to face at Legion, as a list of easy changes that need to be carried out so that the Arcane Mages become a fully functional specialization, however both lists were ignored and vilified...

Now, in addition of reiterating what was said in my previous posts, is noteworthy that the Arcane Mages currently have two main enemies: the slowness of the specialization in general and the rapid depletion of mana.

As for the slowness of the specialization, the main "guilty" is the [Quickening] talent, why? Because thanks to the immense brazenness of Blizzard the effect of "reducing the cast time of [Arcane Blast] (our main damage spell and therefore the most used one in our rotation) the more [Arcane Charges] we had accumulated" (an effect that has been baseline for several expansions), has been stolen from us and transformed into a mandatory talent, which Blizzard now tries to sell us as something new... What a shame!

And regarding the rapid spending of mana, how is possible that a mage can have more health points that mana points? That is something incredible from a RPG point of view! Besides, is the high spending of mana of [Arcane Blast] justified in relation to the damage it causes thanks to the [Arcane Charges]? Obviously not, since each [Arcane Charge] increases more the spending of mana than the increasing of damage it causes.

In short, the Arcane Mages are the perfect example of a bad designed and unkempt spec...

My possible quick fixes are the following, what are yours? (Or perhaps is it better to rely on talents, artifact traits, legendary items or even on gear set pieces in order to be functional? I think that is not a good idea...)

• The baseline [Arcane Blast]'s cast time is reduced by 10% for each stack of [Arcane Charge] accumulated.
  This ends with the slowness of the Arcane rotation
  
• [Quickening] now is a double edge talent much less appealing than before: it merely increases the haste the less mana the mage has.
  This simplifies/devaluates [Quickening], preventing it being a mandatory talent. Although perhaps having applied the previous point [Quickening] should disappear completely.
  
• [Evocation]'s CD is reduced by haste.
  This helps the mage to adjust the mana regeneration in case of having a large amount of haste
  
• The mana pools of the Arcane Mages are much much bigger (at least twice of what they are currently) and scale with intellect. Maybe the old [Amethyst Awakening] artifact trait should return.
  This gives the mage more leeway when playing with the mana
  
• Each time we cast [Arcane Missiles] our mana regeneration is increased by X% for Y seconds. This effect can be accumulated.
  Thus, the famous [Mystic Kilt of the Rune Master] is no longer required in order to have a viable rotation, as while we use our normal DPS rotation, we can potentiate our mana regeneration at will, instead of relying on some legendary pants for gaining a fixed amount of mana.
  
• The [Arcane Charges] will increase both the mana cost as the damage of your spells by the same amount.
  This justifies the high spending of mana, as now the damage done will be proportional (fairer) to the mana consumed
  
• Perhaps some old abilities that played with the mana should return, such as [Nether Attunement] or [Mana Gems].
  This gives the mage more tools with which administrate better the mana

(to see more solutions for the Arcane Mages' problems visit my suggested solutions here)

[fearist]

im sure you've mastered the spec perfectly lul.

[Nitros14]

im sure you've mastered the spec perfectly lul.

Close enough, the new fire is a step down in complexity from what it used to be.

I mean, I'm not #1 fire mage US or anything but.

[stevenho]

All 3 specs are about the same in diffuculty.

[GT4]

Sadly, Arcane Mages will suffer from many annoyances during Legion... annoyances easily avoidable by the way...

For several months since the alpha started, I have been publishing on this forums both a list of problems that the Arcane Mages will have to face at Legion, as a list of easy changes that need to be carried out so that the Arcane Mages become a fully functional specialization, however both lists were ignored and vilified...

Now, in addition of reiterating what was said in my previous posts, is noteworthy that the Arcane Mages currently have two main enemies: the slowness of the specialization in general and the rapid depletion of mana.

As for the slowness of the specialization, the main "guilty" is the [Quickening] talent, why? Because thanks to the immense brazenness of Blizzard the effect of "reducing the cast time of [Arcane Blast] (our main damage spell and therefore the most used one in our rotation) the more [Arcane Charges] we had accumulated" (an effect that has been baseline for several expansions), has been stolen from us and transformed into a mandatory talent, which Blizzard now tries to sell us as something new... What a shame!

And regarding the rapid spending of mana, how is possible that a mage can have more health points that mana points? That is something incredible from a RPG point of view! Besides, is the high spending of mana of [Arcane Blast] justified in relation to the damage it causes thanks to the [Arcane Charges]? Obviously not, since each [Arcane Charge] increases more the spending of mana than the increasing of damage it causes.

In short, the Arcane Mages are the perfect example of a bad designed and unkempt spec...

My possible quick fixes are the following, what are yours? (Or perhaps is it better to rely on talents, artifact traits, legendary items or even on gear set pieces in order to be functional? I think that is not a good idea...)

• The baseline [Arcane Blast]'s cast time is reduced by 10% for each stack of [Arcane Charge] accumulated.
  This ends with the slowness of the Arcane rotation
  
• [Quickening] now is a double edge talent much less appealing than before: it merely increases the haste the less mana the mage has.
  This simplifies/devaluates [Quickening], preventing it being a mandatory talent
  
• [Evocation]'s CD is reduced by haste.
  This helps the mage to adjust the mana regeneration in case of having a large amount of haste
  
• The mana pools of the Arcane Mages are much much bigger (at least twice of what they are currently) and scale with intellect.
  This gives the mage more leeway when playing with the mana
  
• The [Arcane Charges] will increase both the mana cost as the damage of your spells by the same amount.
  This justifies the high spending of mana, as now the damage done will be proportional (fairer) to the mana consumed
  
• Perhaps some old abilities that played with the mana should return, such as [Nether Attunement] or [Mana Gems].
  This gives the mage more tools with which administrate better the mana

(to see more solutions for the Arcane Mages' problems visit my suggested solutions here)

Your suggestions would completely break the spec.

If Arcane Charges increased damage by the same amount as they increase mana cost, there'd be no trade-off between DPS (high charges) and DPM (low charges) and you'd completely destroy the conserve rotation. You could pretty much rotate between 4-charge Arcane Barrage and just Arcane Barrage on cooldown with wand (or whatever else you can do that costs no mana) in between for max DPS.

By making mana scale with intellect, you'd give arcane free additional scaling with each tier and make it impossible to make it a balanced spec at different item levels.

Making quickening stronger at low mana would simply incentivize you to stay at low instead of at high mana for the majority of the fight.

Giving Arcane Blast a reduced cast speed with higher charges would inflate Arcane's burst DPS again (since that's when you're using 4 charge Arcane Blasts) even though Arcane is already really strong at burst DPS.

[Vynestra]

Your suggestions would completely break the spec.

If Arcane Charges increased damage by the same amount as they increase mana cost, there'd be no trade-off between DPS (high charges) and DPM (low charges) and you'd completely destroy the conserve rotation. You could pretty much rotate between 4-charge Arcane Barrage and just Arcane Barrage on cooldown with wand (or whatever else you can do that costs no mana) in between for max DPS.

By making mana scale with intellect, you'd give arcane free additional scaling with each tier and make it impossible to make it a balanced spec at different item levels.

Making quickening stronger at low mana would simply incentivize you to stay at low instead of at high mana for the majority of the fight.

Giving Arcane Blast a reduced cast speed with higher charges would inflate Arcane's burst DPS again (since that's when you're using 4 charge Arcane Blasts) even though Arcane is already really strong at burst DPS.

The spec is already broken right now.

It has pretty poor performance and pales in comparison to fire.

Fire's slew of instant casts just provides too formiddable to arcanes very non-mobile playstyle. Arcane is tuned lower on patchwerk than fire, and so fire having such a ridiculous movement edge and instant casts is just the nail in the coffin.

If arcane is to be viable, it has to be highest st patchwerk of all 3 specs, or it's doomed to fail.

[GT4]

The spec is already broken right now.

It has pretty poor performance and pales in comparison to fire.

Fire's slew of instant casts just provides too formiddable to arcanes very non-mobile playstyle. Arcane is tuned lower on patchwerk than fire, and so fire having such a ridiculous movement edge and instant casts is just the nail in the coffin.

If arcane is to be viable, it has to be highest st patchwerk of all 3 specs, or it's doomed to fail.

Tuning has nothing to do with spec design. You'd think people knew that after a decade but apparently that's still not the case.

The post I was quoting was talking about design and yet all his suggestions would destroy the design of managing your mana while buffing the spec in ways that would let its scaling go through the roof.

Tuning is as trivial as just increasing all spells' damage by x%.

[Pipboi]

How about Arcane Blast and Arcane Missiles reduce the cooldown of Evocation by 2/3/4/5 seconds per arcane charge? Would that make it too easy again?

[Deleted]

my 2 cents:
rotation is too slow.... arcane spells nee less cast time.
AB costs too much mana.... and I am quite sure this is going to be hotfixed, as in all 3 last expansions, as arcane mana costs were too high there too.q.e.d
Arcane Blast CD is to high.... ~4.5 sec... this means the conserve rotation is whether: "don't cast" or " "2xAB+Abarr"" and 2x AB+Abarr means absolute no mana positive sequence.
GT4 is half way right, walf way wrong. I also would like int to increase mana, like before Mop. it was also balanced there.
But I also want to be mage mana "normalized" to 1000. Like all other mana classes all spells need mana based on the base mana. There is absolute no need for 1 Mil Mana.... 1k oder 100 would be enough.

--edit---

ina addition to this: 2/3 arcane legi ultimates are for AE dmg. 1 of those is completely useless in ST situations. Blizz is trying to fix Arcanes ST performance with the legi.... but arcane still sucks and thos ultiumate legy talents feel quite weird.

So my conlclution is: Arcane is really broken. Blizz doesn'tr know what to do with it. Things could have been easy, but too much cooks ruin the soup....

[The Archmage]

I completely disagree with the ones that say "Arcane is broken", because it really is not. At the moment, it's just a matter of tuning. Ice Floes provides more than enough movement for those that learn how to properly use it. Mana management is an issue right now because Mastery scales very poorly, which again it's just a matter of tuning.

AoE is where the spec really needed heavy work, and i think Blizzard provided that. Once numbers are set right, Arcane Rebound is a great idea, expecially with tools like Arcane Orb. Even Touch of the Magi, although i don't like it that much, could provide some tool to work with once its duration is extendend a bit. To be honest, i would make it a passive trait that allows for some percentage of the damage to be spread around all hostile targets, in order to give Arcane a form of passive cleave... but that's just my opinion.

All in all, the spec shines with a complexity that no other spec that i tested on Beta achieves, which will make it a niche spec that few players will be able to play monstrously and many more will be disappointed by.

[Champagne Supernova]

I agree with Archmage. It is just a matter of tuning at this point. Once mastery scaling is sorted and with some decent entry gear, Arcane should be fine with Artifact in hand. You guys also need to realize to utilize Aegwynn's Ascendance every evocation CD. Even at low mastery that hits quite hard, 100-120k usually in the lowest gear. Once mastery climbs higher could easily see over 200k. Not bad for the downtime during evocating. They gave us shimmer and displacement for a reason

[Cracked]

The spec will completely change if you get the legendary pants, then it would be in a very good spot. If you don't have them though, no reason to pick arcane over fire on anything but very bursty aoe.

[Deleted]

Well they are either going to reduce ab mana cost, or change mastery scaling. Although I doubt they will change mastery, because that would cause arcane scaling being out of control sooner or later.

[Deleted]

The word has been denounced by the developers as the root of all evil, but I have to say, for some early content types Arcane is kinda clunky. This is usually early content like the mess of 5mans runs through trash or heroic pugging when levelling an alt because Arcane tends to like consistency and content of that type is usually nothing but. Yes, it has some tools now that might help there, e.g. more potent AOE, but, when you run through content in a way that you can't seriously predict when you must burn cooldowns and when not to, Arcane becomes weak.

Fire has a lot of reliance on correct burn phases too, but, its "conserve" phases seem a lot stronger by default, and much easier to pull off.

Frost never required its burn phases for most of its damage lately, that might change to a small extend, but not by much likely.