As promised, here is the first of two megathreads - Arcane. The Fire megathread will be up tomorrow as I'm not sure I'll have time to complete it today. This already took nearly three hours. I've also added my own commentary for Arcane at the bottom so feel free to use it as a basis for a fresh discussion if you want to.
Please don't hesitate to point out if some of the links are wrong or if there's more information you'd like me to add that I might have skipped. Or if you want it to be organized differently or something.
ARCANE overview (updated 13 Feb 2016)
I BASE SPELLS
- Frost Nova, Polymorph, Counterspell, Slow
- Blink, Displacement, Slow Fall
- Ice Barrier, Greater Invisibility, Mage Armor
- Arcane Charge, Arcane Blast, Arcane Barrage, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Explosion, Mastery: Savant
- Evocation, Mana Attunement
- Arcane Power
- Time Warp
- Spellsteal
- Refreshments, Teleports and Portals, Arcane Linguist, Illusion
II TALENTS
Level 15: Arcane Familiar // Presence of Mind // Torrent
Level 30: Shimmer // Cauterize // Ice Block
Level 45: Mirror Image // Rune of Power // Incanter’s Flow
Level 60: Supernova // Charged Up // Words of Power
Level 75: Ice Floes // Ring of Frost // Ice Ward
Level 90: Nether Tempest // Unstable Magic // Erosion
Level 100: Overpowered // Quickening // Arcane Orb
III Artifact Weapon - Aluneth, Greatstaff of the Magna
- Power of Aegwynn
- Mark of Aluneth
- Crackling Energy
- Torrential Barrage
- Blasting Rod
- Aegwynn’s Wrath
- Aegwynn’s Imperative
- Aegwynn’s Ascendance
- Everywhere at Once
- Arcane Purification
- Slow Down
- Aegwynn’s Fury
- Icy Core
- Arcane Rebound
- Ethereal Sensitivity
- Rule of Threes
- Touch of the Magi
IV PvP Talents
Tier 1: Gladiator’s Medallion // Adaptation // Relentless
Tier 2: Train of Thought // Mind Quickness // Initiation
Tier 3: Netherwind Armor // Burning Determination // Prismatic Cloak
Tier 4: Kleptomania // Dense Ice // Temporal Shield
Tier 5: Concentrated Power // Torment the Weak // Time Anomaly
Tier 6: Master of Escape // Rewind Time // Mass Invisibility
V T19 set bonuses
2-set: Your spells have an additional 10% chance to activate Arcane Missiles.
4-set: Casting Arcane Missiles reduces the remaining cooldown on Evocation by 1 sec.
Shang's commentary:
I. Base toolkit: the base spell list includes sort of a "complete" setup for starters - it has a whole dps rotation, sufficient defensive and survival spells, various crowd control abilities and several cute fluff spells.
II. Talents
Level 15 talents offer a variety of abilities - sustain, burst / pvp and an aoe buff. The familiar increases mana and deals some damage and I guess the most important value here will be how much damage it does and how valuable the 10% mana increase will be overall compared with the benefit of having on-demand burst with PoM. Torrent will be valuable on fights with several adds or cleaving, while PoM provides significant burst for specific adds that need to die very quickly. For primarily single target encounters I feel that the Familiar will definitely be the strongest choice.
Level 30 talents focus on survival. The choice is between a weak Blink buff completely unnecessary for Arcane Mages, Cauterize which saves your life passively and Ice Block with two charges. I honestly don't think anything will ever be able to compete with Ice Block on this level and my opinion is still that one charge of Ice Block should be baseline and the other one can be talented for PvP. Shimmer will practically never be used by anyone and has to be changed or removed.
Level 45 talents are strong primarily passive dps buffs. Images still seem the weakest of the set for Arcane, Rune was changed again and now gives an insanely strong damage buff while standing in the rune and seems like the best choice on all encounters it is usable on. Putting aside all the "we have to stand in a small circle" issues that have existed for years, in the current form it looks quite impressive from my perspective. Flow is the same as it was, providing a varying damage increase over time and will still be the choice for mages when Rune is unavailable due to increased movement. I feel like the 50% on Rune will be reduced at some point, but we'll see what happens and the smart mages will do the math to determine the best choice.
Level 60 talents seem like they might be a tougher choice. Supernova is still the strong burst spell as it was before, Charged Up gives Charges on a relatively low cooldown and Words give free Missiles on Evocation. We'll have to see how Words play out if the current for of the 4-set bonus sticks around, but other than that it will once again be up to math to shine the right path.
Level 75 talents are a weird set - there's only one choice for raiding which is Ice Floes and we like to be able to sometimes cast while moving. The other talents are crowd control and will be used in PvP. I haven't decided if this is good or bad yet, but if they want to keep it that way, the choice is clear.
Level 90 talents are again a decent choice based on encounter. Nether Tempest is a decent damage over time ability which plays nice on encounters with multiple targets living the entire duration. Unstable Magic is a weird combination of single target and aoe which I still don't know how to classify, but it will be interesting to compare it's potential with Erosion's. Erosion potentially gives a steady 10% damage buff. I don't know.
Level 100 talents, again, offer various choices based on encounter. Overpowered extends burst, Quickening gives a lot of passive Haste increasing the dynamic of the entire rotation, but since Haste no longer increases mana renegeration it will have to be carefully considered. Arcane Orb is unchanged and will likely be the primary choice for aoe encounters.
3. Weapon
Our weapon gives a lot of abilities and buffs various spells in cool and useful ways. I particularly like the two Missiles buffs, increased chance to proc and casting more Missiles. From the utility buffs, Evocation immunity and the Blink cooldown reduction are both fascinating and I don't particulary care to debate Evocation giving defense and dealing damage and returning mana all at the same time. Sure, it requires a lot of planning, sometimes possibly even a bit of sacrifice, but we'll see how that develops over time. The other DPS increases - Force Bolt and Mark of Aluneth are both cool. I followed the debate about about Mark being semi-unusable and I disagree with the criticism about targets moving out, especially in raiding.
I won't comment on the PvP talents at this time, although I'm excited to actually play PvP with all of them and I am in love with the return of Prismatic Cloak (a big screw you Death Grip!), that was one of my favorite talents in Wrath and Cataclysm. Some others are very cool too, there's a potential to deal massive damage in pvp within 10 seconds when all the talents, pvp talents and weapon abilities are brought together. Arcane also has a lot of escape.
Finally, the current version of the set bonuses is great for the start of the expansion when we have less mana and Blasting will be more taxing. Missiles will have a huge proc chance and we'll be able to burst more often with the Evocation cd reduction. Let's see how it goes in the future, but from the current iteration of everything Arcane seems to be in a very very good place for the start of the expansion. I'm excited.