Is there a reason people should value your opinion when your responses are immature one-liners lacking any context or explanation?Originally Posted by Azkial
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10% is not negligible and that gap should be reduced and most likely will be because of Blizzard's mission statement of a maximum of 5% DPS difference (one would hope they apply it). However from a historic perspective, the difference between the top and bottom DPS has been wider than 60%. In WoD, Arcane and Fire were ahead of Frost by 14%...and Frost was in the top 5 dps...
That 10% is based on simulations. Fire is pretty straight-forward and was easy to simulate because of its reliable playstyle. Arcane's simulation is still a work in progress and doesn't include many mechanics such as saving procs for Touch of the Magi. Also those simulations were done before the recent hotfixes. Fire went down, and Arcane should go up. Also, Fire's simulations overvalue Cinderstorm because they assume that every single cinder hits all targets. They admit that the numbers are a bit too high.
Then on top of that, those simulations consider that fights are either purely ST or purely AOE. Fire requires Combustion for effective AOE rotation. Without Combustion, their sustained AOE is pretty bad. Arcane go even out the discrepancies on non-Patchwerk fights, with Arcane being outright superior on several fights as seen by beta testers.
Therefore, while Arcane can reliably switch from ST to AOE on a whim, Fire struggles with that. They have to trade between better ST or better AOE. Arcane's only decision in that regard is talents, and conveniently for us, the Arcane Familar + RoP + Resonance + Nether Tempest + Quickening build parses in the top 3 compositions in every single scenario. Fire on the other hand must decide between LB and UB, as well as CiS and Kindling.
The DPS difference goes down even further, with the kilt legendary boosting DPS by up to 8% compared to Fire's best legendary (sun-king) giving it 6%. Arcane's second best artifact (ring) is a 4% dps increase, while Fire's (also ring) is a 2.8% increase.
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All in all, the EFFECTIVE difference in real life applications is going to be less.
This does NOT mean that Arcane is fine as is. We should not rely on legendaries to make our rotation smoother. Mastery should not be a worse Versatility and our worst stat. Our mastery needs a little boost to put it ahead of other secondaries, as well as to bring our DPS numbers closer to Fire. Also, Quickening is leagues ahead of other tier 6 talents. Overpower and Arcane Orb need to be buffed to make them more competitive. Also, having to enter melee to cast AOE is fine but it places unnecessary survival risk. AE should be castable from range if there's a target, or on self as it is now if there is no target.