Arcane is bad!

[Sharnie786]

On Beta there is a long setup before you even open. Everything seems to be on the GCD and the dmg outside of burst is so poor you go from top of the metres to bottom outside of cooldowns. With the 3 minute cooldown on AP (obviously can be altered by conduits and covenants) this means no viability in M+ at all. It has been the worst mage spec since HFC in terms of numbers alone, and in HFC it was just broken because of the trinket. The redesign in Legion started off wonky with Quickening where you'd actually not press anything for ages.

The new talents don't add anything to the gameplay that we don't already have. It seems the class is designed and then there are GO TO "choices" to be somewhat viable in maybe 1 aspect of the game.

Single Target opener = 10 seconds of setup and then 1 button until oom
Single Target conserve = 3 buttons
Single Target mini burst = 3 globals and then 1 button

AoE = 1 button and sometimes 2 depending on number of targets.

Mobility in Shadowlands is odd too. Displacement has been removed in the name of homogeneity. I don't think anyone said displacement makes me feel like I'm not playing a mage, they feel different in a bad way so remove it. Altered time is great but why did they remove Displacement?

They should bring back Displacement and make Arcane Orb or Nether Tempest baseline. They should also remove the GCD on some abilities. If you go Necrolord you need to add another GCD to your opener. It really makes no sense.

No one is actually talking about this because other than in PvP no one really plays Arcane. Everyone mentions Spriests but they've been top tier in terms of gameplay and DMG throughout Legion and BfA.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Not really gonna comment on gameplay because Arcane. But..

Mobility in Shadowlands is odd too. Displacement has been removed in the name of homogeneity. I don't think anyone said displacement makes me feel like I'm not playing a mage, they feel different in a bad way so remove it. Altered time is great but why did they remove Displacement?

It's gone because Alter Time is back, in arguably its most useful form. The ability for Arcane to AT+Shimmer+Displacement+Shimmerx2 would provide absolutely nutty positional plays, so they removed the one that overlaps with AT. And even more so if you consider Venthyr or Night Fae movement abilities on top of that.

[ClassicPeon]

On Beta there is a long setup before you even open. Everything seems to be on the GCD and the dmg outside of burst is so poor you go from top of the metres to bottom outside of cooldowns. With the 3 minute cooldown on AP (obviously can be altered by conduits and covenants) this means no viability in M+ at all. It has been the worst mage spec since HFC in terms of numbers alone, and in HFC it was just broken because of the trinket. The redesign in Legion started off wonky with Quickening where you'd actually not press anything for ages.

The new talents don't add anything to the gameplay that we don't already have. It seems the class is designed and then there are GO TO "choices" to be somewhat viable in maybe 1 aspect of the game.

Single Target opener = 10 seconds of setup and then 1 button until oom
Single Target conserve = 3 buttons
Single Target mini burst = 3 globals and then 1 button

AoE = 1 button and sometimes 2 depending on number of targets.

Mobility in Shadowlands is odd too. Displacement has been removed in the name of homogeneity. I don't think anyone said displacement makes me feel like I'm not playing a mage, they feel different in a bad way so remove it. Altered time is great but why did they remove Displacement?

They should bring back Displacement and make Arcane Orb or Nether Tempest baseline. They should also remove the GCD on some abilities. If you go Necrolord you need to add another GCD to your opener. It really makes no sense.

No one is actually talking about this because other than in PvP no one really plays Arcane. Everyone mentions Spriests but they've been top tier in terms of gameplay and DMG throughout Legion and BfA.

You are bringing up several seperate issues here.

1. Blizzard doesnt read mmo-c. Its poorly moderated and offers some of the absolute worst constructive feedback out there.
2. If you want to offer good feedback keep it simple and to the point. Arguing that its doing too little damage, the utility isnt good enough and that the gcd stuff sucks in the same feedback round will net you deaf ears

[Soon-TM]

You are bringing up several seperate issues here.

1. Blizzard doesnt read mmo-c. Its poorly moderated and offers some of the absolute worst constructive feedback out there.
2. If you want to offer good feedback keep it simple and to the point. Arguing that its doing too little damage, the utility isnt good enough and that the gcd stuff sucks in the same feedback round will net you deaf ears

Thanks for the lecture, but the issue has already been neatly presented in the beta forums by some of the best Mage players in the world. It is a known issue by know, along with Frost "rotation" being way too reliant on procs, and as such, can be quite poor when it comes to sustained damage if RNGesus does not smile on you. But evidently you don't read the beta forums, or you wouldn't have posted such inane stuff.

[Sharnie786]

You are bringing up several seperate issues here.

1. Blizzard doesnt read mmo-c. Its poorly moderated and offers some of the absolute worst constructive feedback out there.
2. If you want to offer good feedback keep it simple and to the point. Arguing that its doing too little damage, the utility isnt good enough and that the gcd stuff sucks in the same feedback round will net you deaf ears

I get that, my intention was not to bring this to the attention of Blizzard but moreso to the attention of other players. The more people talking about the more Blizzard would notice.

To your second point, why would I bring up one issue and not the others? Surely a discussion about a spec being terrible in almost all avenues shouldn't be limited to one talking point at a time.

A forum post is about expressing yourself, I expressed my concerns in hopes others would voice there's and also to see if anyone had any information I'm missing.

Alas, i appreciate your input

[schwarzkopf]

Displacement has been replaced by the far more interesting Alter Time + Master of Time.
Blink CD is going to be massively short as you progress.
Auto Rune power, auto 4 charges ...

Arcane mage in Shadowlands is a vast improvement over BfA in terms of mobility and in terms of wind up time.

[Sharnie786]

It is better now but there could be a slight change to things like the removal of GCD.

[Cosmic Janitor]

It definitely is better but it's still arcane. So love it or hate it I guess. Outside of numerical advantage depending on tuning at the appropriate point in time my only use for arcane is mostly cases where I need burst and I can't stay at range. Especially the last point is probably the biggest advantage of arcane for me, as it's usually our only spec that doesn't suffer from "distance-timing".

The change to MI and RoP are also welcome to at least help with the setup issues. Now it remains to be see if the necrolord ability will be balanced around arcane or arcane around the necrolord ability .

[Saratoya]

Displacement has been replaced by the far more interesting Alter Time + Master of Time.
Blink CD is going to be massively short as you progress.
Auto Rune power, auto 4 charges ...

Arcane mage in Shadowlands is a vast improvement over BfA in terms of mobility and in terms of wind up time.

Alter Time + Master of Time is a nerf compared to displacement. You either lose Shimmer or Slipstream (which are both more powerful than Master of Time). Yes, you gain back health (but who cares, in most case healers can heal you and you will still die if the dmg makes your health reach 0), but you have to use it on prediction, where displacement was on reaction.

Arcane is thus nerf in mobility in SL, but gain a lot of others things being Touch of the Magi which is extremely good, and we can now use Orb which is very strong in cleave/Aoe situation. If you add the covenants (being Necro for AB cleave but once per 3 min or NF with CDR for Orb spam and more burn phase), you have one strong spec, at least for now.

That one is for OP :

And no, Arcane is not bad on beta, it was even overtuned until the last tuning pass. Now, it is still strong, just a bit less.

[Your Mommy]

Arcane is bad!

What else is new...
But on a more serious note, it'd be more wise to wait and see how the spec scales with gear and whatnot.

[SkagenRora]

I thought Arcane was meme spec that noone played?

Are you telling me that there are people who have unironiclly played Arcane?

[Saratoya]

I thought Arcane was meme spec that noone played?

Are you telling me that there are people who have unironiclly played Arcane?

Arcane was the top spec in Wod and the top spec topping the meter above everything else by that.

Was nerfed in Legion and kinda bad in BFA when compared to the other two.

But it seems it will be pretty strong in SL (depending of tuning of course) because a lot of flaws were fixed (Arcane still need a bit more cleave but there is still soulbinds and conduits).

[Athulua]

It's sort of playable in BFA if you stack masterful corruptions and you have a crap ton of mana & mana regeneration.
But believe it or not, even if you can maintain your dump rotation for long time (which is possible with 250k mana & ton of regen) it's still inferior than fire. A spec designed around having a clearly drawn and strong burst window performs worse (in burst) than fire which is sustain spec...

[Saratoya]

It's sort of playable in BFA if you stack masterful corruptions and you have a crap ton of mana & mana regeneration.
But believe it or not, even if you can maintain your dump rotation for long time (which is possible with 250k mana & ton of regen) it's still inferior than fire. A spec designed around having a clearly drawn and strong burst window performs worse (in burst) than fire which is sustain spec...

Fire is a burst spec. It does nearly to no dmg outside of combustion. And ST damage of Arcane is stronger than Fire's in BFA. It is just that Fire has the spread Ignite making its cleave strong.

Frost is the mage sustain spec.

[schwarzkopf]

Alter Time + Master of Time is a nerf compared to displacement.

All up - not so much, you can move further away, you can tag your start with no GCD when you want, and it resets your blink cd as well.
Add that to blink's CD being shorter than Shimmer.
Slipstream is pretty much useless from the start with the lego power.

So having used Shimmer/Displacement all of BfA - I can say that AlterTime/Master of time is far more powerful - but also has a far higher skill cap on using it especially around traps etc.

Arcane is thus nerf in mobility in SL,

That's totally incorrect ... it just requires a bit of retraining and you will be better off (with Master of Time).

[Saratoya]

All up - not so much, you can move further away, you can tag your start with no GCD when you want, and it resets your blink cd as well.
Add that to blink's CD being shorter than Shimmer.
Slipstream is pretty much useless from the start with the lego power.

So having used Shimmer/Displacement all of BfA - I can say that AlterTime/Master of time is far more powerful - but also has a far higher skill cap on using it especially around traps etc.



That's totally incorrect ... it just requires a bit of retraining and you will be better off (with Master of Time).

Nope, you are wrong, and I knew you would. But anyway, agree to disagree. You can cast while shimmering, can't do that with master of time making it less powerful.

In theory, you are right, but in practice, shimmer is stronger while dpsing making it the superior option.

And displacement is affected by shimmer while Alter Time stops any cast. it is a nice tool but inferior to Shimmer + displacement or even compare to displacement alone.

[schwarzkopf]

Nope, you are wrong, and I knew you would. But anyway, agree to disagree.

Well - I'm better off in Shadowlands for mobility, if you choose not to be - that's up to you I suppose

Short blink CD, alter time, master of time and cast while moving all at once

[Saratoya]

Well - I'm better off in Shadowlands for mobility, if you choose not to be - that's up to you I suppose

Short blink CD, alter time, master of time and cast while moving all at once

You won't cast while moving without shimmer btw.

Every one is free to gimp themselves if they so desire.

[schwarzkopf]

You won't cast while moving without shimmer btw

Odd - I am doing exactly that, but again - it is a choice.

Every one is free to gimp themselves if they so desire.

Sure - you have that option.

[Saratoya]

Odd - I am doing exactly that, but again - it is a choice.



Sure - you have that option.

No, you weave a blink between two casts losing a gcd (and sometimes taking damage which can kill you in relevant content or you cancel early you cast losing even more dps), effectively losing dps. And Alter Time does not have shimmer baked in.