Remaking the Arcane spec

[chemicader]

Hello my fellow mages. As many of you know Arcane does the highest damage of all the mage specs atm. But, many people like me, completely detest the playstyle and mechanics of arcane. What are your suggestions to improve the spec?

In my opinion the spec needs a complete overhaul, the basic mechanic of mana influencing your damage is repulsive. Few utility spells you use costs mana, and therefor is a minor dps loss. (Not a big deal, but for a guy who likes min maxing it just feels like bad gameplay)

I personally am out of ideas for arcane, but I think the idea of mana increasing your should be scrapped or expanded on.

Post your thoughts and discuss, and remember that arcane being fine as it is now is opinion.

This thread is to discuss ideas to improve arcane, not to tell people to go frost, fire, or stop playing.

[Deleted]

Last time I checked, all the mage specs are pretty close on single target. Also, from my experience in SoO, frost starts out very well, but when you get higher amounts of crit or mastery, fire and arcane starts pulling ahead due to the scaling.

Anyway, I find the mana management system of arcane interesting due to how it fits the theme of the spec, and to be fair, it is not that difficult to manage (RoP for infinite mana *cough*). In addition, the only way really get below 90% mana is to avoid RoP and only spamming Arcane blast all day long.
The only thing that is a drawback with arcane is the supposed "lack of mobility" which is a good thing since it adds complexity to movement patterns (although not that much) and causes you to plan ahead (blink and ice floes).

[chemicader]

It is indeed not hard to manage, but it feels boring and dull. And with heroic gear (especially after the addition of upgrades) arcane pulls higher. And tbh, I have yet to see a fire mage with same gear to beat my frost :3

[Huevos]

Hello my fellow mages. As many of you know Arcane does the highest damage of all the mage specs atm. But, many people like me, completely detest the playstyle and mechanics of arcane. What are your suggestions to improve the spec?

In my opinion the spec needs a complete overhaul, the basic mechanic of mana influincing your damage is repulsive. Every bit off utility you use costs mana, and therefor is a minor dps loss. (Not a big deal, but for a guy who likes min maxing it just feels bad gameplay)

I personally am out of ideas for arcane, but I think the idea of mana increasing your should be scrapped.

Post your thoughts and discuss, and remember that arcane being fine as it is now is opinion.

I'm not sure many will agree with you about mana adept being "repulsive", as it makes the rotation somewhat dynamic, which in my opinion makes any dps class more fun to play. And we're not getting an overhaul any time soon - if they were going to remake Arcane they'd have already done it.

What bit of utility are you using that is costing you mana? Spellsteal is the only thing that comes to mind, but that costs significantly less for Arcane that it does for the other specs, and it is almost never used in raids anyway.

Arcane will win on multi-target, but you can certainly perform well as Frost and Fire, so if you hate mana adept, why not play one of the other two specs?

[Wilderness]

I'm not a big fan of the Arcane playstyle either - but I do believe a fair number of people enjoy it (minus RoP being required, this is just about Arcane's rotation/management). And even though I don't really care for it, I like that it has a whole different feel to it than the other two specs. That's a good thing in my opinion, and I wouldn't want that to change. So with that in mind, I don't know what sort of changes you'd want, but I don't think I would want a whole lot to change about it, despite it being kind of meh to me right now.

[Deleted]

Arcane is the only one where you don't have to press shiny buttons in random order. It's the best designed spec for mages in the game. That said, all 3 specs are dumb as fuck.

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It is indeed not hard to manage, but it feels boring and dull. And with heroic gear (especially after the addition of upgrades) arcane pulls higher. And tbh, I have yet to see a fire mage with same gear to beat my frost :3

And the other specs hardly have any rotation to it, just press whatever lights up in your bar. I mean, I don't mind if people dislike Arcane. But when they call it more dull than the other two is when you kinda loose all credibility.

[chemicader]

It is an opinion. I personally dislike the long casts, lack of movement, lower utility compared to the other two specs, and I think you are wrong with the flashing lights part, since frost and fire do actually have some depth, and if you claim they are just spamming your procs away you kinda loose all credibility.

And for Huevos, I do play the other two specs but as someone who likes to min max, I would play arcane in a heartbeat if it would be more appealing to me.

[LocNess]

People don't like Arcane? I mean I get RoP hate, but I honestly feel Arcane is at one of the best points it has ever been. Love the spec (and actually RoP as Arcane).

[Frostjack]

Arcane is fine how it is and it is doing really well but a great fire mage vs a great arcane will do about the same depending on fight tbh and Like LocNess said, Arcane has a more fluent play style than it has ever been to me. Only thing that kills the dps is usually big movement which can be fix'd if you know the fight enough. And for the long cast time? Arcane in my opinion i don't really know but it has the fastest casts compared to fire and loses out to frost cause of it being a haste stack.

Also only utility I can think of that cost more than 0 stack arcane charge is Temp shield but if you trust healers enough you can go Flame Glow and spend less mana

[Shangalar]

Honestly I feel that Mana Adept is by far the best Mastery in the game. I am even a bit sad that we don't get even more tools to play around Charges and Mastery, but I understand that it would be needlessly complicated. Arcane as a spec now is easy to start playing, but Mana Adept is the thing that makes it a very difficult spec at the highest levels.

So no, I don't want an overhaul. It even looks to be shaping up quite nicely for WoD with the revamped talents and evocation available again.

[Mastamage]

but it feels boring and dull.

More boring than playing Lite-Brite Frost or spamming Fireball?

I think you are wrong with the flashing lights part, since frost and fire do actually have some depth

No, they really don't.

And tbh, I have yet to see a fire mage with same gear to beat my frost

Methinks you're playing with bad Fire mages.

[vvaniish]

I LOVE arcane, you are constantly rewarded with big deeps if you manage your mana well. If you don't pay attention, do some bad rune placements or too many AB's so that your mana is low you'll do crap deeps. You always have to plan where you are going next and when.

[Florena]

I like the mana management part of arcane, and I'm glad at least one spec is going to care about mana in WoD. The only problem I have currently is that arcane mages are forced to take RoP due to synergy with their mastery. (RoP as an option I'm good with but it really sucks to be forced into it.) But with that going away in WoD I don't think the spec itself needs to be totally revamped, though definitely given a touch of pvp love like fire is with its new set bonus.

[mrgreenthump]

It is an opinion. I personally dislike the long casts, lack of movement.

That sort of is the direction Blizzard is taking Arcane though. And I sort of like it. It sort of brings a new direction for fights, you have to know what is going on, going to happen and where to stand.

Now as to rest of Arcane.. Yeah I'm not a fan of Mana Adept, but it can be perfected ofc. It sort of also lacks visuals and has never worked fine in PvP, it has either been fairly bad or too good with burst.


Oh and Battle Mage to replace Arcane!

[NPI]

I prefer the arcane mage of the Catacylsm, where mana was actually a resource and there was a burst phase and a conserve phase. You were able to do insane dps when it was needed at the cost of tiny dps while recovering. Other classes, like warlocks are able to gather resource and unleash it when its needed or its most useful.
We can't do anything with our resource because it does not offers significantly more dps due to our mastery.
Personally I think (especially as our dots will be optional) our Mastery should be something that related to mana regeneration or mana spending (reduced cost or increased AM proc chance, etc). That would feel you actually gain strength during the expansion. If you are fire mage, in 5.4 gear you will shoot significantly more pyros than in 5.0 gear. As frost, you will get more IL and FB procs. As arcane everything stays the same because of the fixed proc rate, only the numbers are bigger.

[Traveler Voltin]

sorry i cant take arcane seriously after the whole "1 button spec" thing.

Please don't troll with outdated information from two years ago -voltaa

[Florena]

sorry i cant take arcane seriously after the whole "1 button spec" thing.

So you can't take it seriously now because of how it was at one point in the past?

[Mastamage]

sorry i cant take arcane seriously after the whole "1 button spec" thing.

Please enlighten me to this 1 button spec you speak of. I'm just dying to know.

[chemicader]

It looks like people are sticking onto pointing that they have different opinions - changing the original post to better instruct people to think of ways to improve arcane, except just bickering on people's opinions on it.

[LocNess]

It looks like people are sticking onto pointing that they have different opinions - changing the original post to better instruct people to think of ways to improve arcane, except just bickering on people's opinions on it.

Ways to improve it:

-By keeping it the exact same but giving arcane blast a better animation