An Idea for Arcane!

[rossross]

I wander if anyone in Blizzard has ever considered making arcane barrage consume one stack of arcane charge as apposed to all. I think barrage would either need a damage reduction overall or a different scaling with the charge but, it would create mobility in the speck and a decent aoe ability.
Just a thought

[Deleted]

The entire idea behind Abarr is to dump all the stacks of arcane charge to conserve mana, due to how scorch currently works it's not really relevant tho. But blizzard never intended for a playstyle were you just camp at 6 stacks the entire fight.

[Imnick]

You'd have to cast several in a row to maintain a mana neutral rotation in that case, unless the intention would be that you don't stack to six.
I can foresee in the future a proc (perhaps tied to a tier set) that allows you to ABarr without consuming any stacks at all, but I don't think it always consuming only one would really work out.

[rossross]

in some situations you would have to spam barrage. For example RnG or high movement fights. I assume weaving missile procs would alleviate that in most cases.

[Fennixx]

Or they could make it consume only 3 stacks (similar to how paladins spend holy power - yes, I know there are people in this forum who dislike comparing classes lol)

Or add an additional effect - casting arcane barrage increases you casting speed byx% per y secs.

[Imnick]

A haste buff to mollify the cost of having to reset your stacks would be nice

...but then they might as well just bake it into the default casting speed

[Soulstrike]

pretty much what resania said.....
blizzard's idea of managing mana is to dump the charge when you are low use some mana when you are comfortable with the mana you got

[Elegiac]

You'd have to cast several in a row to maintain a mana neutral rotation in that case, unless the intention would be that you don't stack to six.
I can foresee in the future a proc (perhaps tied to a tier set) that allows you to ABarr without consuming any stacks at all, but I don't think it always consuming only one would really work out.

Because the solution to a problem of a spell that is annoying to use despite its relatively sexy graphics using is a gear-dependent proc, right.

As I said in another thread, clearing half of your Arcane Charges would be better than all or one. Or, better yet, give Arcane another spell which performs the same function but is single target exclusive, and turn Barrage into a cleave spell.

[Imnick]

Blizzard very frequently use tier sets to test drive future changes or fix balance problems, they've even said so themselves

[rossross]

I don't understand peoples logic when they say
"blizzard's idea of managing mana is to dump the charge when you are low use some mana when you are comfortable with the mana you got"

That is exactly why i say have barrage drop one stack of charge instead of all..It becomes the mana management spell. when getting low on mana one would clear charge stacks to reduce mana consumption. All the while our rotaion still remains flexible and usable in all situations.

[Soulstrike]

I don't understand peoples logic when they say
"blizzard's idea of managing mana is to dump the charge when you are low use some mana when you are comfortable with the mana you got"

That is exactly why i say have barrage drop one stack of charge instead of all..It becomes the mana management spell. when getting low on mana one would clear charge stacks to reduce mana consumption. All the while our rotaion still remains flexible and usable in all situations.

uhhh what do you mean "it becomes the mana mangaement spell??" it ALREADY IS A MANA MANAGMENT spell >_>

why fix something its not broken?? you are just trying to "fix" this just for your Qol or something /shrug

having 4 stack of AC is better solution than this

[rossross]

As of right now the top damage rotations consist of a maximum of 3 arcane barrages cast in an entire fight. When scorch weaving goes away and people swap to a haste build 6 stack camping will continue. Arcane barrage does not manage mana its just a reset button for a failed rotation. Nothing more

---------- Post added 2013-01-20 at 05:29 PM ----------

uhhh what do you mean "it becomes the mana mangaement spell??" it ALREADY IS A MANA MANAGMENT spell >_>

why fix something its not broken?? you are just trying to "fix" this just for your Qol or something /shrug

having 4 stack of AC is better solution than this

Im pretty sure when everyone in the mage comunity chooses to not use a spell because of its function. That means the spell is broken. Whether its working as intended or not.

[Soulstrike]

As of right now the top damage rotations consist of a maximum of 3 arcane barrages cast in an entire fight. When scorch weaving goes away and people swap to a haste build 6 stack camping will continue. Arcane barrage does not manage mana its just a reset button for a failed rotation. Nothing more

---------- Post added 2013-01-20 at 05:29 PM ----------



Im pretty sure when everyone in the mage comunity chooses to not use a spell because of its function. That means the spell is broken. Whether its working as intended or not.

excuse me?? did you just say "fail rotation"???? ummm....... what????

can you be more specific about this fail rotation??? (dumping 6charge with barrage is normal???) scorch weaving was broken and wasnt intented to be a proper rotation so arcane's mana regen is geting nerf so you call it intented rotation fail???? /mind blown

[Shangalar]

*snip*

misunderstood something.

[rossross]

Dumping Six charges might be what blizzard intends for Arcane to do but,that is not the case. 6 stack camping is by far a better damage out put then dumping stacks. And if you cant maintain over 90% mana at 6 stacks then you failed. For example choosing to cast Arcane Blast at 90% mana with 6 stacks is a failure in rotation.

---------- Post added 2013-01-20 at 05:46 PM ----------

If people think that changing the mana cost on Scorch is gonna prevent 6 stack camping they are wrong. You can glyph for ice lance and weave it the same as scorch and get almost the exact same results as scorch weaving.

[Skidd]

The problem with Abarr is not the fact that its meant to be a mana management tool, its the way it goes about it. Clearing the arcane stacks gives us the feeling of hopelessness. I just spent 8+ seconds working on getting to a point where my arcane blasts start to put out comparable damage to other classes finishers. So now I have a spammable finisher that allows me to start climbing the damage charts and casting a Abarr at this point seems counter productive giving the fact it will produce less damage than my next AB would have (given that its a single target) and it has reset my stacks and my now next AB will be even less damage. What do I get for doing this? Oh I use less mana at the cost of doing less damage now.

If you go ahead an ignore arcane mastery and think about what I just said is there any other spec in the game that feels this way? No and that is why the mages ae finding a way to stay at 6 stacks. Blizzard is not going to change this by forcing us to clear our stacks. If we cant find a way to stay at 6 stacks we would rather change spec or reroll.

[rossross]

The problem with Abarr is not the fact that its meant to be a mana management tool, its the way it goes about it. Clearing the arcane stacks gives us the feeling of hopelessness. I just spent 8+ seconds working on getting to a point where my arcane blasts start to put out comparable damage to other classes finishers. So now I have a spammable finisher that allows me to start climbing the damage charts and casting a Abarr at this point seems counter productive giving the fact it will produce less damage than my next AB would have (given that its a single target) and it has reset my stacks and my now next AB will be even less damage. What do I get for doing this? Oh I use less mana at the cost of doing less damage now.

If you go ahead an ignore arcane mastery and think about what I just said is there any other spec in the game that feels this way? No and that is why the mages ae finding a way to stay at 6 stacks. Blizzard is not going to change this by forcing us to clear our stacks. If we cant find a way to stay at 6 stacks we would rather change spec or reroll.

I agree with you 100% that is why i say Barrage should consume 1 stack and not all..As of right now scorch is the mana management spell the way barrage should be.

[Skidd]

If Abarr was changed to clearing only one stack that might be a viable option but it would have to be tuned around being cast at 6 stacks. By that I mean it would have to be mana neutral being at 6 stacks, casting Abarr and then casting AB back to 6 stacks. They would have to change mana consumption on AB at 5 stacks and Abarr mana to coincide with MP5.

That is harder than it sounds and probably would cause more issues we or at least I am not aware of. Haste for instance while its tired to mana regen will become king.

To be totally honest this will just be a band aid trying to cover a severed artery. The whole premise of the arcane spec has been lost when mastery was introduced. Back in wrath even though it was a two button spec it was more about balancing burst over mana management than it is now. And to be honest its still a two button spec disguised by applying tools like RoP or Invocation. At least in its current form its 3 buttons, maybe 4 when using alter time or in AOE mode and scorch.

[Zoros]

Arcane Barrage is fun. The amount of arcane charges, and time to stack it is the problem. It feels too punishing to cast Barrage in PvE, and it takes too much time to stack charges in PvP.

Solution, make Arcane Power generate two charges, and remove/increase arcane charge duration. Or... take back the 4 charges system.

[Methusula]

I think either moving back to 4 stacks to get the bursty feel back to Arcane a bit, or having Barrage give a six second haste buff would help a lot. I threw around the idea of changing Missiles so they cost mana and having barrage return mana as a management mechanism on the official forums to mixed reviews. I just really think they need to make it not feel like a penalty every time we have to cast Barrage.