Ways to improve the arcane playstyle

[Koltak]

Hello,
A thread like this may be a bit late, one month before cataclysm ships, however, I feel, that arcane lacks something.
In the class preview, we got promised new ways to get mana back by sacrificing DPS.
Now take a look at what we got: 0 mana Arcane Missiles and Mage Armor.
Even though they are tools to conserve or even regen mana, I think they lack the situational awareness, I was expecting of arcane, the choice of mana gain vs. DPS.
So, I thought of a new proc, lets call it "Arcane current".
The tooltip would read like this:
"Pure arcane energy flows through your veins, increasing the damage and the mana cost of your Arcane Barrage by x% and allowing it to not consume your Arcane Blast debuff. In addition, your Flame Orb will be converted into an Arcane Orb.

Arcane Orb: Launches a Orb of pure arcane Energy forward from the Mage's position, converting x life every second of the closest enemy target into mana for you for 15 secs. Shares the cooldown of Arcane Barrage."

Basically, my idea is to give us something else to cast besides Arcane Blast during burn phases and the decision between much damage via Arcane Barrage and managain through the Arcane Orb.

Now, what are your ideas, on how to improve arcane, without completely overhauling the talent tree? Or are you really completely satisfied with how arcane plays out right now?

[zephid]

I think all Blizzard needs to do to make Arcane more fun to play is to increase the damage of arcane missiles and arcane barrage, or just let them benefit from the arcane blast debuff like they used to.
That way arcane mages might end up actually wanting to use arcane missiles and arcane barrage on cooldown and that would give them more of a "real" rotation.

[sicness]

Arcane already has it's 'situational awareness' in having to actually manage your mana wisely and not just using evocation and mana gems when you're low.

[Koltak]

Arcane already has it's 'situational awareness' in having to actually manage your mana wisely and not just using evocation and mana gems when you're low.

I wouldn't really call that situational awareness, since you can plan ahead of time, how/when to burn through your mana to maximise the benefit, you get from those two cooldowns.

[zephid]

Arcane already has it's 'situational awareness' in having to actually manage your mana wisely and not just using evocation and mana gems when you're low.

The problem is that it's not hard to manage your mana, so it doesn't really make the spec fun to play.
You will go into every fight already knowing what your mana-neutral-rotation is, and you will stick to that until it's time for a burn phase.

[Swizzle]

Rotations=/=fun

[DirewolfX]

They should increase the MPS of the burn rotation and either decrease the MPS or increase the DPS of the conserve rotation. Oh wait, they did that.

[Aunor]

Ask ur rl to be in grp with 1-2 resto shamans = win ( they use manatide totem )
I dont think we need another way to regen mana, but mybie another dps spell or get AM back in game, to be more usable, even do on lvl 85 they are apsolutly esential i still think they shoud be a dps bonus procc, and not mana saving spell, since we have barage to loose the stacks but like this we have 2 mana saving spells witch is pointless, so what i woud do is i woud make Arcane barage cost like 200 mana, and make missiless bonus dmg procc or somthaing like that.

[DirewolfX]

Mana Tide is garbage for mages; it gives you +350% spirit for 12 seconds.

Your only option is to suck up innervates (or get lucky with Hymn of Hope).

[zephid]

Rotations=/=fun

True, having a complex rotation doesn't automatically means that it's really fun to play, but having no real rotation is a lot worse imo.
At least I have more fun playing if I have more than 1-2 buttons to press while dps'ing.

[CrossPunisher]

I have to admit that in all honesty I was somewhat frustrated and mostly confused by how the Arcane spec got "overhauled" with 4.0.1, the only thing that really didn't change is that while I'm playing my mage in Arcane spec I feel like I have no genuine rotation. I've never had a problem with mana regen, still don't. Haven't ever since I put my mage in T9 gear. My mana barely goes down still.

However, I did have a "gotcha" moment of sorts when I went to finally re-work my dual-spec and took a more in depth look at the fire spec and, after doing my glyphs and running some dungeons with it, I have to say the rotation feels deeper by comparison and I was having a lot more fun than I was in Arcane spec. IMO they REALLY stepped up the fire spec and really it was much needed otherwise it would have NEVER been seen as a viable alternative to raiding in Arcane spec like in previous raid environments. I tried raiding in Fire spec previously and most people were more confused that I was NOT Arcane.

Arcane, to me, is still not a BAD choice for raiding but it definitely lacks direction, even more so than before. Fire, though, looks like it could come back in a serious way in the Cataclysm environment. There will probably be bosses that as a mage one spec will definitely be more desirable than others. A lot of what I've been seeing from a DPS perspective is more essential need to Dual Spec because there seems to be more of a coming emphasis on being dual spec and able to switch between different boss encounters on the fly. It's a little more thinking outside the box than some may be used to but with DKs it was always that way pre-patch. Some specs were better or more efficient for different enounters than others. Classes that are more pure DPS look like Blizz is putting them into more situational choices where a big part of raids will be what spec for which boss in general. Maybe I'm reading into it too far, but it looks like if that is how it is, then people who can't "get it" are gonna find Cata raiding an exercise in aggrivation.

[Aunor]

Mana Tide is garbage for mages; it gives you +350% spirit for 12 seconds.

Your only option is to suck up innervates (or get lucky with Hymn of Hope).

Il have to disagree on this one, sure it might not be as good as inervate or evo but it still regenerates decent amount of mana, especialy if you have 2 rshamans, and its much better than nothing

[takolin]

Il have to disagree on this one, sure it might not be as good as inervate or evo but it still regenerates decent amount of mana, especialy if you have 2 rshamans, and its much better than nothing

Spirit only increase out of combat mana regen as far as I know and only healers can benefit for 50% from that regen in combat due to their spec choice.

Anyway a major issue with arcane that I see is twofold:

1: If your evocation gets interrupted due to the need to move or whatnot, your dps will suffer for the next 2 minutes as your mana conservative cycle will do less damage due to lower mana.
2: Switching to adds that need to be burned down fast. Either your damage will be low due to the fact that you need to stay in the 90-100% mana range. Or you do good damage at the cost of lower damage on the boss as your mana will be below 90% depending on your evocation status.

Issue 1 can be solved by either changing the way evocation works by making it work like innervate (though not castable on others) or adding a talent in the arcane tree in the line of: Your evocation can be used while moving.

Issue 2 is a lot harder and would require an overhaul of the mastery.

Arcane also suffers a lot from moving due to a lack of instants (Abar has a 4sec cooldown and PoM has an even longer one). Fire wins hand down at any fight that requires mobility and frost has not only a pet that keeps casting but also a spammable IL though it doesn't hit that hard without FoF.


And arcane mages will get hurt a lot more by any fight that involves a mana drain mechanic when compared to other casters.

[Radak]

I know blizzard said only healer will benefit from spirit regen from mana in battle in cata.
However if you look at your stat window in game you will see we actually do get in combat mana regen which my guess is from our base spirit. (even without mage armor)

I do think however that you don't want to steal the mana regen from the totems and give a healer a place in that party because they really need it.

[Deleted]

bring back arcane combos

[Deleted]

I think it's too late for such changes - blizz wants to see how such mana manegement playstyle works out too much to change it.

[Koltak]

They should increase the MPS of the burn rotation and either decrease the MPS or increase the DPS of the conserve rotation. Oh wait, they did that.

i have to agree, that this is, what arcane needs to have. However, while the decision, when to burn through your mana, or when to conserve it is a fun one, executing this is not fun.
Burning through mana just means, that you will use nothing but Arcane Blast, while conserving/regenerating means, that you will use either missiles or barrage after 3-5 Arcane Blast.
These are the points, where I would like to have some improvements.

"Stealing" mana regeneration from healers is not something, that I would call fun, you will end pressing this one Arcane blast button just a bit more often.