Arcane Blast spam

[Wardonis]

Personally I was much more a fan of BC and Wrath style arcane. I understand the way it plays now and I honestly think that Arcane Blast spam sucks. 11141311411314 is more fun than 111111111111. But it's most likely hear to stay. That said if Arcane Blast had more visual weight I think it would feel better to press. I fully understand that people don't want a missile because of traveling time and that pvpers want it to stay as is to snipe, but what if there was a glyph that added a beam animation. One that hits instantly with no travel time. Could even tie that animation strength to the number of charges you have. So, at 0 charges its a thin line and at 4 charges its large and more intense looking. I think that a glyph like this could do wonders for the spec while also being optional for the traditionalists

[Nitros14]

BC had plenty of arcane blast spam, toward the end of a fight when you wanted to burn your mana down. There was room to do more damage if you were skillful.

WOTLK is one of the absolute worst incarnations of arcane. All you do is hit 11112 with no variation or skill involved.

[Segus1992]

I'm confused. Arcane in TBC was literally just Arcane Blast spam, and then wait for mana regen, no? It's not like Missiles were worth using. Sure, you used Frostbolts, but hardly because they were good DPS, but just because you couldn't afford Blasting.

[Nitros14]

I'm confused. Arcane in TBC was literally just Arcane Blast spam, and then wait for mana regen, no? It's not like Missiles were worth using. Sure, you used Frostbolts, but hardly because they were good DPS, but just because you couldn't afford Blasting.

IIRC it was better to use missiles as your filler in tier 4 and 5 until the patch in early 2008 reworked the frost tree, added icy veins and buffed frost. Also Hydross and Vashj adds were immune to frost and Rage Winterchill was basically immune to frost. Also elemental precision was nerfed from 6% to 3% spell hit in TBC while arcane focus remained 10%. So especially early when you had no spell hit missiles hit 7% more than fireball. Al'ar and Kael'thas adds were also immune to fire, as were Illidan flames.

There was a spec once Sunwell came out that used 2 piece tier 5 4 piece tier 6 for 5% frostbolt damage and 20% arcane blast damage. Though by that point Deep Fire was just superior. Not that anyone actually took mages to Sunwell Plateau if they had warlocks to bring instead.

Regardless, there was a skill factor in TBC to running OOM just as the fight ended so you used all your possible mana. That disappeared in WOTLK once it became a set rotation of ABABABABAM.

[professore]

I'm confused. Arcane in TBC was literally just Arcane Blast spam, and then wait for mana regen, no? It's not like Missiles were worth using. Sure, you used Frostbolts, but hardly because they were good DPS, but just because you couldn't afford Blasting.

Arcane was reliant on 80% dmg from arcane blast, so yea, arcane blast spam, with fillers in the way of frost bolt and arcane missiles to get out of casting mp5 regen. You would chain mana potions and mana gems (3 ranks down from highest, rest were not worth cast time/mana back). It was working only with 2pc bonus of tier 5 set. Frostbolt was very very mana efficient, arcane missiles was good only with clearcasts otherwise mana efficiency was abysmal.

Mainly you would have to control your mana after the first set of cooldown usage, without higher ilvl gear and intellect gems you would consume your manabar in less than 15seconds the Arcane Power duration was. So it was quite challenging to keep Arcane Blast spam for 5minutes or more.

[Dreen]

Not a fan of assuming but this post feels like u havent been playing arcane that much throughout the expansions, lets take a recent example, Legion, there was nothing more satisfying than the effect of blasting 8 arcane missiles from the procc into a target, and the rotation was way beyond just pressing arcane blast, but if your experience is based of BFA, yeah its been pretty shit but shadowlands has some promising changes to the rotation in general, major issues still beeing arcane power and other cds beeing on global cd so you feel like your loading up your damage for 4 seconds straight

[Kyriani]

IIRC it was better to use missiles as your filler in tier 4 and 5 until the patch in early 2008 reworked the frost tree, added icy veins and buffed frost. Also Hydross and Vashj adds were immune to frost and Rage Winterchill was basically immune to frost. Also elemental precision was nerfed from 6% to 3% spell hit in TBC while arcane focus remained 10%. So especially early when you had no spell hit missiles hit 7% more than fireball. Al'ar and Kael'thas adds were also immune to fire, as were Illidan flames.

There was a spec once Sunwell came out that used 2 piece tier 5 4 piece tier 6 for 5% frostbolt damage and 20% arcane blast damage. Though by that point Deep Fire was just superior. Not that anyone actually took mages to Sunwell Plateau if they had warlocks to bring instead.

Regardless, there was a skill factor in TBC to running OOM just as the fight ended so you used all your possible mana. That disappeared in WOTLK once it became a set rotation of ABABABABAM.

I was actually one of those 2pcT5/4pcT6 Arcane Mages and my guild did actually take me to Sunwell! But I wasn't Arcane/Frost, I was Arcane/Fire back then. I know it wasn't the "optimal" Arcane set up but in vanilla I did the Grand Marshal grind as Arcane/Fire PoM Pyro and after that kept raiding like that except for the short time I was in deeper Naxx40 and I couldn't keep up without going full fire for uber rolling ignites. When TBC hit I went back to Arcane/Fire and was thrilled that Arcane actually had a proper nuke of its own.

I know I could have done better as Arcane/Frost, but I was happy as Arcane/Fire and was one of our guilds top dps at the time.

[Segus1992]

IIRC it was better to use missiles as your filler in tier 4 and 5 until the patch in early 2008 reworked the frost tree, added icy veins and buffed frost. Also Hydross and Vashj adds were immune to frost and Rage Winterchill was basically immune to frost. Also elemental precision was nerfed from 6% to 3% spell hit in TBC while arcane focus remained 10%. So especially early when you had no spell hit missiles hit 7% more than fireball. Al'ar and Kael'thas adds were also immune to fire, as were Illidan flames.

There was a spec once Sunwell came out that used 2 piece tier 5 4 piece tier 6 for 5% frostbolt damage and 20% arcane blast damage. Though by that point Deep Fire was just superior. Not that anyone actually took mages to Sunwell Plateau if they had warlocks to bring instead.

Regardless, there was a skill factor in TBC to running OOM just as the fight ended so you used all your possible mana. That disappeared in WOTLK once it became a set rotation of ABABABABAM.

I'm 100% sure I saw an early TBC first-kill video with an Arcane Mage spamming Arcane Blast. Maybe he sucked, who knows.

Regardless, as I remember it, people who specced deep Arcane (and not Arcane/Frost or Arcane/Fire) also gemmed and geared for intellect/mana - surely you didn't cast much else than AB in that case (assuming you aren't oom ofc, in which case I assume wanding was better unless the boss was about to die?)?
I get that speccing and choosing what to cast for which boss was more exciting in TBC, but I don't see how the rotation was deeper than it is today.

Arcane was reliant on 80% dmg from arcane blast, so yea, arcane blast spam, with fillers in the way of frost bolt and arcane missiles to get out of casting mp5 regen. You would chain mana potions and mana gems (3 ranks down from highest, rest were not worth cast time/mana back). It was working only with 2pc bonus of tier 5 set. Frostbolt was very very mana efficient, arcane missiles was good only with clearcasts otherwise mana efficiency was abysmal.

Mainly you would have to control your mana after the first set of cooldown usage, without higher ilvl gear and intellect gems you would consume your manabar in less than 15seconds the Arcane Power duration was. So it was quite challenging to keep Arcane Blast spam for 5minutes or more.

I get wanting to use the 5 second rule as Arcane in TBC, but how would Frostbolt help you achieve that? Surely AM with a Clearcasting proc followed by wanding would be the best way? That said, with 60% of spirit regen being active while casting as Arcane, I'm guessing you would gain a lot more from slower regen while Frostbolting, and basically only casting AB during CDs and to run oom as the boss dies.

I admit that isn't entirely uninteresting, especially for the TBC era.

[Daedius]

Arcane's all about Mana Management.

[Nitros14]

Arcane was reliant on 80% dmg from arcane blast, so yea, arcane blast spam, with fillers in the way of frost bolt and arcane missiles to get out of casting mp5 regen. You would chain mana potions and mana gems (3 ranks down from highest, rest were not worth cast time/mana back). It was working only with 2pc bonus of tier 5 set. Frostbolt was very very mana efficient, arcane missiles was good only with clearcasts otherwise mana efficiency was abysmal.

Mainly you would have to control your mana after the first set of cooldown usage, without higher ilvl gear and intellect gems you would consume your manabar in less than 15seconds the Arcane Power duration was. So it was quite challenging to keep Arcane Blast spam for 5minutes or more.

They did a few things from classic to TBC to make missiles less bad.

The empowered arcane missiles talent changed arcane missiles' spellpower coefficient to 145%, while they did this change "Each rank of [Improved Frostbolt] now reduces your spell damage coefficient by 2%." in 2.0.6 which made frostbolt worse.

Just taking some data from the old wikis.

Arcane missiles ([832 x .9 clearcasting] = 748) mana with 1600 spellpower coefficient 1.45 base damage 1400 is 3,720 damage. DPM = 4.97

Frostbolt is ([330 x .9 clearcasting] = 297) mana with 1600 spellpower coefficient 0.7 base damage 597 is 1,717 damage. DPM = 5.78

Frostbolt was 16% more mana efficient ignoring hit talents. Abysmal and very very good are overstating it. If you were gearing for only 6% hit because of arcane focus and getting crit instead missiles was pretty close to frostbolt in mana efficiency and did 16% more dps as well.

I think one of the later BC patches that reworked frost and added icy veins also moved ice shards near the start of the tree so it was more accessible.

There was also a change in 2.1 [Frostbolt]: Damage on rank 13 has been increased slightly"

And Patch 2.3 "[Improved Frostbolt]: The reduction in damage coefficient caused by this talent has been removed."

Maybe he sucked, who knows.

I think in 2007 most people basically knew nothing. A whole lot of suboptimal stuff running around. Lord knows I remember everyone said to use missiles in early 2007 but that could be wrong too.

Also by way of comparison

AB0 damage per mana = 9.68
AB1 DPM = 5.53
AB2 DPM = 3.87
AB3 DPM = 2.98

[professore]

Arcane missile on a Clearcasting would not trigger the 5 second rule so you would arcane missile, then frostbolt and then arcane blast, this sequence would give you 2.5 seconds of full mp5 and reset your AB debuff (8seconds debuff) as you would start Arcane Blast with 0.5 seconds left on debuff basically casting a 4 charge without the mana cost penalty. This cycle was way better and efficient in terms of dpm and mp5 regen in comparison to frostbolt spam. Sure you would frostbolt if you would get no CC procs, but the target was to do exactly that cycle when not having AP up as the 4 charge hasted AB with no extra mana cost was one of the best dps per mana spells in the game.

EDIT:

They did a few things from classic to TBC to make missiles less bad.

The empowered arcane missiles talent changed arcane missiles' spellpower coefficient to 145%, while they did this change "Each rank of [Improved Frostbolt] now reduces your spell damage coefficient by 2%." in 2.0.6 which made frostbolt worse.

Just taking some data from the old wikis.

Arcane missiles ([832 x .9 clearcasting] = 748) mana with 1600 spellpower coefficient 1.45 base damage 1400 is 3,720 damage. DPM = 4.97

Frostbolt is ([330 x .9 clearcasting] = 297) mana with 1600 spellpower coefficient 0.7 base damage 597 is 1,717 damage. DPM = 5.78

Frostbolt was 16% more mana efficient ignoring hit talents. Abysmal and very very good are overstating it. If you were gearing for only 6% hit because of arcane focus and getting crit instead missiles was pretty close to frostbolt in mana efficiency and did 16% more dps as well.

Yes, this is exactly why Frostbolt was not the most favored choice. There is also the factor that back then spell crit was 1.5% dmg and you would use talent points to get % crit damage bonus, as arcane you would get 1.75% crit damage and 1.5% crit damage on frostbolt, that means AM dpm is almost or a bit higher than frostbolt, with the added benefit of higher dps and some out of casting mp5. Someone on EJ made a formula factoring all of this and got to a very good difference if memory serves.

I think in 2007 most people basically knew nothing. A whole lot of suboptimal stuff running around.

Not really. One of the game designers (now) was a mage in EJ (back then) that made this Rawr emulation that would be quite accurate, much more than simcraft is now. But also the reason is the game was much simpler back then, with less random stuff poping everywhere.

EDIT:2
Corrected AB max charge count was 4 not 3.

[Corseth]

TBC Arcane was about trying to reach 100% Arcane Blast spam by any means necessary. Shadow priest assistance, innervates, etc, and if you didn't have those external tools available you filled, but not because it was part of any kind of rotation or fit properly, but because you simply ran out of mana otherwise. There were lots of tricks for mana management and getitng mp5 ticks, but the more you had to rely on those over blast spammage the more the spec fell behind fire in DPS.

Arcane does still need something - I think part of the problem at the moment is Missiles' identity is a little torn between two worlds (is it a damage proc? A mana-saving proc? It's trying to be both without being a lot of either right now), and the mana management could probably use one more tool. The rut it falls into is during burn phase you're only hitting 1 active button unless a proc happens, and conserve phase where you use a little more tools is a little... too predictable in how you'll hit your buttons, I think. Arcane goes with modifier abilities like Presence of Mind over something like say Scorch (a seperate filler for separate situations) but the long cooldown on these effects means they just end up getting dumped into the burn phase.

If I had to pick an easy kill, I'd probably make Nether Tempest baseline, in that it also adds a timing management (want to cast at 4 stacks and in a window near expiring, so you have to aim for those to line up) and buff it to be an important part of the rotation. But that's for the scenario where there's very few changes allowed; I think there's room to tool around more than that. Arcane Orb is also a really fun button, but I think has less impact to how you plan ahead than trying to avoid Tempest falling off when you're not at 4 stacks, without wasting mana staying at 4 stacks.

The theme of the spec is essentially medium-range (90 second window) resource management and that should stay. That's the biggest thing that sets it apart from other specs - almost every spec has some big combo of cooldowns they blow for burst damage, so ROP + arcane power is not really 'different' there, but outside of those big cooldown line-ups, Arcane is currently the only DPS spec that is trying to look a full 90 seconds ahead instead of the next proc or next few seconds of resources. I would say this is probably underdeveloped presently, but it's definitely the theme of the spec and should be expanded on when possible.

[Dizzeeyooo]

The theme of the spec is essentially medium-range (90 second window) resource management and that should stay ... Arcane is currently the only DPS spec that is trying to look a full 90 seconds ahead instead ... but it's definitely the theme of the spec and should be expanded on when possible.

Presumably you dislike the current Shadowlands Alpha iteration of Arcane then, where Arcane Power has been moved to a 3 min cd

[rogoth]

Personally I was much more a fan of BC and Wrath style arcane. I understand the way it plays now and I honestly think that Arcane Blast spam sucks. 11141311411314 is more fun than 111111111111. But it's most likely hear to stay. That said if Arcane Blast had more visual weight I think it would feel better to press. I fully understand that people don't want a missile because of traveling time and that pvpers want it to stay as is to snipe, but what if there was a glyph that added a beam animation. One that hits instantly with no travel time. Could even tie that animation strength to the number of charges you have. So, at 0 charges its a thin line and at 4 charges its large and more intense looking. I think that a glyph like this could do wonders for the spec while also being optional for the traditionalists

towards the end of wrath, especially when the cata pre patch hit, you could literally have max stacks of arcane charges and regen more mana than a fully costed arcane blast would drain, you literally had nothing else to press outside of cooldowns/trinkets, they have failed comically to make it a decent spec to play, and having very few animation updates over the lifespan of the game hasn't helped because as you say, until legion there wasn't any real indicator of you hitting something with what is supposed to be your hardest hitting ability, and the spell animation for arcane missiles was and still is imho terrible, unless blizz changes what the spec does on a fundamental level it will always remain in that place where once you get enough gear and other shit alongside it all that will happen is it goes back to AB spam and nothing much more besides that.

[Meillassoux]

Now we will be able to Arcane Blast x 3 with Deathborne though. I say screw Missiles and Barrage and just spend 10 minutes of GCDs preparing and then press a single AB and destroy the planet.

Joking aside though, I think the addition of Barrage giving mana back, Touch of Magi and the Enlightened talent make for some nice small additions. GCD horror and Rune of Power aside I think arcane will be more fun that many previous iterations.

[Corseth]

I haven't been following the class changes yet, I usually wait till a little closer to release because everything tends to bump around so much before then. That would be... weird though. 90 seconds is a good projection because it's short enough to plan for, long enough to be different from energy or 'short CD' systems, but not SO long that having a poor window completely removes you from a fight (for instance, when they boosted mana regen, not enough to be energy but enough to let you conserve at low mana, that was a good change because it meant if you messed up, you did /less/ DPS rather than /none/ - we ought to aim for a good difference between correct and error, but getting one evocate interrupted by a boss mechanic should not completely shut you out of a fight, it should instead cost you some ~20% or so who knows what number is appropriate but its not 100%). A 180 second window starts to double down on mistakes a bit too hard IMO, unless they're also reducing the impact of the burn phase (but if burn and conserve get too close to each other...).

I mean my only response to that is I have more questions than opinions on it, at this time, as I just don't know enough about Shadowlands' class playstyle direction.

Arcane's mana management has to be long term enough to differentiate it from managing energy, reaction-procs, or managing 8-20s cooldowns like other classes are more aimed for and so messing it up has punishment in the mid-term rather than short term, but not so long term that it's infeasible to actually plan for the usage or where messing it up gets TOO punishing.

[Wardonis]

You guys got a little side tracked, this post was mostly about a glyph to add an animation to Arcane Blast

[Corseth]

There was a spec once Sunwell came out that used 2 piece tier 5 4 piece tier 6 for 5% frostbolt damage and 20% arcane blast damage. Though by that point Deep Fire was just superior. Not that anyone actually took mages to Sunwell Plateau if they had warlocks to bring instead.

I think this is part of what led to them getting tired of 'raid tetris' as a design. Mages COULD be competitive with curse of doom/shadowbolt spam warlocks, IF you had exactly the right raid composition. Whereas warlocks did not require any special composition to hit the DPS checkmarks (but still benefited from having them), mages flat needed it - their raid tetris utility wasn't high enough alone to make up for them not being able to meet marks and the fights absolutely demanded you meet marks just by raw numbers.

I was fortunate enough to be raiding sunwell as mage back in the day (and we got a KJ kill), but yeah I did it as deep fire because a couple fights there were unkind to anything less than optimal. It wasn't that mages couldn't keep up with warlocks per se, it was that, a warlock did around 2200-2400 DPS with black temple gear by themselves, and a mage, to reach the 2000-2400 level necessary to meet the DPS checks, HAD to have a shadow priest and curse of elements in play, and you then had to have more than 1 mage benefiting from that, with at least one of them upkeeping Scorch, to make it worth the warlock using COE and bringing a shadow priest (who themselves could not meet the DPS check, so their benefits had to enable enough others to do so to make up for them). My raid worked out that way, but it was definitely tetris and I definitely would not have met the brutallus and m'uru DPS checks without the raid comp.

[Wardonis]

More on topic: I would absolutely love a glyph to give Arcane Blast a different spell effect. On-target blast type spells like AB and Priest's Smite tend to get lost when fighting big bosses appearing inside them and whatnot. I would love a projectile glyph, even with added travel time. Ideally they would grow in size and look different with each new arcane charge but even if they didn't I'd be on board.

I have often thought of reversing the roles of Blast and Missiles but I feel the pvpers would qq too much.

I was suggesting an instant hit beam so there would be no added travel time.

[Well]

They should honestly just make Missiles the finisher and have it fire 1 extra missile per arcane charge with a proc for barrage while blasting to make your next missiles fire 2 more missiles.

I think that on Arcane, blizzard has constantly missed the mark, honestly.