Arcane Mastery Change Idea

[bigben882]

To start off I have never been truly happy with the recent design of Arcane Mages. Don’t get me wrong I like that you have to manage your mana and I understand that’s what the spec is about. The thing I don’t like is with the mastery how the more damage you do the less damage you do.

To give you some background on me, I have played arcane since MC and continued playing through TBC, WotLK, Cata and now into MOP. I am not an excellent player but I would regularly top damage metres in my guild runs when they were running raids. Lately due to the guild going awol I have been running LFR to see the content.

I enjoyed playing arcane throughout BC and WotLK where you would burn your mana, regen then conserve till evo was off cooldown and then burn and repeat. It was fun to play.

Then Cata dropped and they added mastery which was a cool idea and for the most part it works for other classes. I was still doing competitive dps but that was mostly due to arcane mages being tuned too high especially at the start of the expansion. Then of course MOP is released and they basically change arcane again but for the most part it felt better than Cata. Then 5.2 hit and we got nerfed into the ground, I feel like a wet blanket would hit these mobs harder.
This leads to the change I had in mind for mastery. I didn’t like the idea of +X damage for mastery, so I picked something unique to arcane that changes the way we play. Arcane Charges, I got the idea from the tier 15 4pc bonus. Increase the potency of arcane charges by X amount, but that would be a pure dps boost and I felt it needed a drawback. So then I thought why don’t I change the positive and negative aspects of arcane charges.

Changes to arcane charges.

	Current	New
Damage	50%	25%
Mana Penalty	150%	150%

This may look like a nerf but when you add a base mastery value of 5% and change the base damage of arcane blast this will be about the same damage as current, with more front end damage. As for the numbers used it is an average of what I generally do per charge.

Charges	Current	New
0	25000	35000
1	37500	45500
2	50000	56000
3	62500	66500
4	75000	77000

On to the actual mastery itself, on live mastery for arcane has a coefficient of 300. This is too low for my new set up otherwise we would end up with grossly inflated figures. I have set it at 800 for the minute but I was tossing up going to 1000. As you can see from the table based on my gear you are going to get roughly 6% from gear, I would imagine you will use mage armour as well which will add nearly 4%.

Mastery Coefficient 800

Mastery From Gear	4684	5.86%
Mage Armour	3000	3.75%
Total	7684	9.61%

When you factor all the above together you come up with the new value for arcane charges.

Arcane Charge	Damage Modifier	Arcane Charge	Mana Modifier
Spell Base	25%	Spell Base	150%
Base Mastery	5%	Base Mastery	10%
Mastery From Gear	9.61%	Mastery From Gear	19.21%
Total	39.61%	Total	179.21%

Further to the previous damage table, this is an example of expected damage of arcane blast using the new values

Charges	Current	New	31%	32%	33%	34%	35%	39.61%
0	25000	35000	35000	35000	35000	35000	35000	35000
1	37500	45500	45850	46200	46550	46900	47250	48862
2	50000	56000	56700	57400	58100	58800	59500	62724
3	62500	66500	67550	68600	69650	70700	71750	76585
4	75000	77000	78400	79800	81200	82600	84000	90447

This Table shows expected mana cost over the same mastery values as above. Below that is how many cast you can expect to get off with no mana regeneration, the table assumes you are at 100% mana.

Charges	Current	160%	162%	164%	166%	168%	170%	179.21%
0	5100	5100	5100	5100	5100	5100	5100	5100
1	7650	8160	8211	8262	8313	8364	8415	9140
2	15300	16320	16422	16524	16626	16728	16830	18279
3	22950	24480	24633	24786	24939	25092	25245	27419
4	30600	32640	32844	33048	33252	33456	33660	36559

Charges	OOM	OOM	OOM	OOM	OOM	OOM	OOM	OOM
0	58.82	58.82	58.82	58.82	58.82	58.82	58.82	58.82
1	39.22	36.76	36.54	36.31	36.09	35.87	35.65	32.82
2	19.61	18.38	18.27	18.16	18.04	17.93	17.83	16.41
3	13.07	12.25	12.18	12.10	12.03	11.96	11.88	10.94
4	9.80	9.19	9.13	9.08	9.02	8.97	8.91	8.21

The other arcane spells would also need to be changed around my idea otherwise arcane blast would be really powerful in comparison. Numbers may need to be tweaked but I believe I have the fundamentals in place to put the idea out to the community. I can't post links but I have provided the address to my character that I based the values off.

Let me know if there is anything you guys don’t understand I will try and explain the best I can. All comments and criticism is welcome.

us.battle.net/wow/en/character/dreadmaul/Ibber/advanced

[Northem]

I start from the premise that the current arcane mastery obviously is a real SCAM. Since, in fact, it says: "The more mana you have the more damage you do," that is, the point of maximum profit would be not spending mana, i.e. not casting spells, which is totally irrational.

The question is: what is the theme of the arcane spec? Blizzard says it's mana control, however, I say that is the burst damage. And how to unite the two concepts? Easy: empowering the arcane charges.

In fact, the idea proposed in the thread is the most successful, the most logical and the best no doubt. The arcane mastery should boost the arcane charges, is pure logic.

However, since it is so fashionable now for the arcane mages the issue of controlling the flow of time... why not have a mastery related to that? I have thought of a mastery that reduces the remaining cooldown of the arcane skills by a percentage the more successful spells casts the mage ...

[bigben882]

In fact, the idea proposed in the thread is the most successful, the most logical and the best no doubt. The arcane mastery should boost the arcane charges, is pure logic.

However, since it is so fashionable now for the arcane mages the issue of controlling the flow of time... why not have a mastery related to that? I have thought of a mastery that reduces the remaining cooldown of the arcane skills by a percentage the more successful spells casts the mage ...

This is the exact approach I was coming from (hence all the tables ). I agree arcane is becoming more of a time based class with the glyph of slow directly affecting Arcane Blast, and with the new spell at 87 Altertime.

I always seem to forget to use Alter Time even though it is a really powerful spell, my arcane charges and mana never seem to line up when I want to use the spell. For me it works great with Frost and Fire but with Arcane there are too many things to line up all at once to get it to work 100%. But with the mastery change I suggested I feel it will fall into place easier along with the other specs.

[Northem]

This is the exact approach I was coming from (hence all the tables ).

Exactly, we agree, and what's more, your tables demonstrate empirically that, as well as being the most logical solution, is also a fully feasible solution.

I always seem to forget to use Alter Time even though it is a really powerful spell, my arcane charges and mana never seem to line up when I want to use the spell. For me it works great with Frost and Fire but with Arcane there are too many things to line up all at once to get it to work 100%. But with the mastery change I suggested I feel it will fall into place easier along with the other specs.

I just think the spell "Alter Time" is a tool used only sporadically and at peak times, in fact, what I would do would enhance this skill even more, turning it into a true multi-purpose tool, by extending its duration and making actually return the mage to a previous time, fusing it with the underused talent "Temporal Shield" (since the two partially make the same) as follows:

^{Alter Time}

---

10.0% of base mana
Instant
5 min cooldown
Requires level 87

Alter the fabric of time, causing the caster to return to their current location, health, mana, remaining cooldowns, buffs, and debuffs, when cast a second time, or after 15 sec.

This spell is usable while stunned, frozen, incapacitated, feared or asleep, and is not on the global cooldown.

Effect negated if the caster dies within the 15 sec before the effect occurs or moves too far away.

Do you see the differences? Can you imagine the many possibilities that this tool could give to the mages?

NOTE: The numbers should be adjusted.

[bigben882]

To expand on the idea of the time magic you could have an ability similar to alter time that you can cast on other players or even a small group. Or even give mages some kind of battle res where you restore someone to a previous moment in time, you could have it backfire sometimes where it restores them to a child with their damage lowered by a %. Obviously this would be a debuff that wears off after about a minute.

I still have hopes that they create a new spec for mages revolving around pure time based magic, they could be a healer that reverses time for characters, healing their wounds in the process. Time stop would be a cool spell where everything in a 10-20 yard radius would freeze and be stunned. There are heaps of ways they can implement something like this. They really need to open the pure classes to something other then just damage, whilst many people enjoying doing just one role I find a lot more people enjoy having the option to do other things.

[Northem]

I do not want to begin to speculate what would be the best fourth specialization for mages (something that I really hope someday happens), what is certain is that I have always considered the arcane specialization not as a pure DPS specialization, but a sort of cross between DPS and Support, ie with skills that help the mage and his allies in unfavorable circumstances.