Antorus & Arcane spec

[pkm]

I think the reason arcane is not played is because to "comfortably" play it you need the talent Slipstream and the Legendary Kilt.
However the optimal build is with neither of these as you want 2+4 set and the utility of Shimmer.

This immediately leads to a choice that sucks.

Not comfortablely, more like optimally. Evocation at the right time is paramount to the success of the spec. A failed evocation or improper use will severely cripple your dps. De-syncing cooldowns also is a major dps loss.

Playing without the kilt is not really a big problem. Learning the spec properly will make the kilt seem not worth the Lego spot. But everything else is the problem.

[Gungnir]

I love Arcane, but it just doesn't feel impactful in combat.
Not to mention as many have pointed out, you're counting on a lot of things lining up nicely to have even decent DPS.

[brbshower]

how do you define suck?

is suck when your little window doesnt say you are one of the top dps?
is suck when your rotation isnt fun?
is suck when you dont have meaningfull cooldowns?
is suck when your a gnome and jumping + arcane explosion doesnt enlarge the radius anymore (sorry sad throwback)

i 99% think you mean the 1st

but top dps means shit... this is a MMO, defeating a boss is a group effort
for example our self proclaimed no1 mage does indeed do a bit more dmg then me on most fights (read fights with alot of (soak)mechanics) but on almost stationary fights (varimathras for example ) i blow him out of the water by a large margin. this is due to the fact that he ignores mechanics with an entitelist feeling that healers should compensate and others can do the mechanics, and i dont. this also shows in the healing taken

so by your standard... he is the beter player because logs, yet he throws f-ing fits when he gets benched on progress fights due to the fact he just sucks at mechanics and rl doesnt trust him because well he just isnt that well practiced in them.

if its the later points, go play a specc/class you enjoy if you arnt in a top 10guild that 5% dps loss hardly is going to make a difference

He's still better than you though. If he is pulling higher dps on anything he wins. You can say but but but mechanics all day long. And you're right, dude is a tool if he is just standing in crap expecting to be healed through it. But you also have to take into account that some classes are better at avoiding mechanics than others. Come back when you're better at mechanics AND you can out dps him, then we can talk

[Magictricks]

Un-nerf Our 2 set and 4 set (i can't believe they were nerfed in the first place lol) make slipstream baseline and in it's place add a talent that gives us norgannons casting movement buff for 2 seconds after standing still for 5 seconds.
Arcane is now fixed for single target.


Change nether tempest to now link with the closest target with the most health and duplicate itself on them for the duration and buff it's damage by 100%.
2/3 target cleave is now fixed.

[davesignal]

Un-nerf Our 2 set and 4 set (i can't believe they were nerfed in the first place lol) make slipstream baseline and in it's place add a talent that gives us norgannons casting movement buff for 2 seconds after standing still for 5 seconds.

Nobody would ever take this talent over Shimmer. Slipstream fixes ~85% of all movement casting problems, provided you're smart enough to always keep one charge of Arcane Missiles in reserve to deal with short movement. Passive Slipstream means having access to Shimmer, which would fix the remaining 15% (not that I wouldn't love to have both Shimmer and Slipstream).

I don't even know what you think the problem with cleave is, between Arcane Explosion, Arcane Barrage, Arcane Rebound, Mark of Aluneth, etc, etc. Do you mean spread out council fights? Because Arcane is never going to be a multidot spec like Shadow or Affliction, as much as people seem inexplicably fond of Nether Tempest.

[D3athsting]

How ti fix arcane:
1) Remove rop
2) Remove rop
3) Remove rop
4) Make evocation castable in movement

[Deleted]

Nobody would ever take this talent over Shimmer. Slipstream fixes ~85% of all movement casting problems, provided you're smart enough to always keep one charge of Arcane Missiles in reserve to deal with short movement. Passive Slipstream means having access to Shimmer, which would fix the remaining 15% (not that I wouldn't love to have both Shimmer and Slipstream).

I don't even know what you think the problem with cleave is, between Arcane Explosion, Arcane Barrage, Arcane Rebound, Mark of Aluneth, etc, etc. Do you mean spread out council fights? Because Arcane is never going to be a multidot spec like Shadow or Affliction, as much as people seem inexplicably fond of Nether Tempest.

the thing is why a multidot spec can deal as much or even more than a pure ST spec on a single target fight and why is the multidot spec outperform absolutly all classes, all specs in a single raid?? Don't you think there is a time for balance? There is different type of cleaving situation, if the target are way apart from each other its called for a nonmultidoting spec a pure single target FIGHT. The raid isn't made for arcane spec every situation can turn into a huge disadvantage..

[schwarzkopf]

Arcane is fun, but you have to learn the bosses to be able to learn the timing of your abilities. That makes it more challenging than just twitching when something proc's.

Arcane isn't best - because it has no effective multi-dot - meaning that when you are moving your throughput is zero.

The challenge is to never walk during a boss fight

- - - Updated - - -

How ti fix arcane:
1) Remove rop
2) Remove rop
3) Remove rop
4) Make evocation castable in movement

1-3 - already done (MI or IF)
4 - already done (Slipstream or Shimmer).

[Ambereldus]

Taking a look at logs, mulitdotting classes actually aren't as OP as it seems. My quick-estimates are based off of Heroic 75th percentile, because I don't know Mythic mechanics (add padding opportunities?) nor do I trust the low number of parses to be unbiased ("law of large numbers").

For reference, the three classically DoT centric classes are AffLocks, Boomkins, and SPriests. Other specs may edge into that territory now, but I'll be ignoring that for now.

Affliction and Shadow look fairly strong overall, and Balance isn't doing bad either. However, if you look at it on a boss-by-boss basis, any encounter with significant singlet target mechanics are where these classes fall short. Typically Affliction is highest of the three, but even Aff falters on a fight like Varimathras, pure ST. It seems fights like Felhounds and Coven are the only fights where they truely excel far above other classes, and those fights bump up the overall ranking of the DoT specs. For Boomkins, High Command is also highly ranked due to the strong AoE they can provide.

On the other hand, Arcane has its own niche: Stacked burst AoE. Arcane beats other mage specs on fights like High Command, Eonar, and the Portal Keeper. These fights all allow Arcane mages to get up close and personal to the adds, blow CDs, and AE until OOM. Unfortunately, Arcane hasn't been a ST spec for quite a while, so its unfair to judge it as such. ST fights like Worldbreaker, Imonar, and Aggramar all show Arcane near (or at) the bottom, though rankings may be biased due to a lower number of parses for Arcane.

e.g. If most good players play Frost/Fire, and few good players play arcane, the parse rankings will be skewed towards Frost/Fire even if Arcane is OP AF in the right hands.


And yes, the raid has a lot of mechanics that will mess with Arcane's burst phases, lowering our overall parses. Its just something you'll have to deal with if you stick to the spec. Once you master the mechanics, the issues slowly disappear...its just much harder to get to that point when compared to Fire or Frost.

[davesignal]

the thing is why a multidot spec can deal as much or even more than a pure ST spec on a single target fight and why is the multidot spec outperform absolutly all classes, all specs in a single raid??

They can't. I mained a Shadow Priest from Wrath to the start of Tomb of Sargeras.

On single target fights, 99% of the time a multidot spec is fucking awful. They dominate so hard on council fights that it skews the overall rankings, and makes them look strong overall. The big exception right now is Afflock, which is a broken spec that has amazing single target, multidot, and is practically immortal.

If you want an accurate look at what playing a multidot spec is like, look at Shadow:

Shadow on Coven, extremely high.
Shadow on Soulhunter, extremely low.

Now of course, there are two additional conclusions here:

1.) Afflocks are fucking busted; even on fights where Shadow struggles, Affliction does well. On fights where Shadow excels, Affliction crushes.
2.) Mages aren't in an amazing place overall. Every spec could probably use a 5% buff, at bare minimum, on top of other spec-specific buffs. I think Soulhunter might be Arcane's best fight, and even then it barely edges out Destruction and is only a little ahead of Aff.

[Charge me Doctor]

arcane is complicated and unforgiving > less people play arcane > more people pick fire and frost of ez deeps > less arcane parses on logs > "hey guys i've looked at logs and arcane suck balls pls buff AB damage 50%!"

It doesn't work that way. People don't play arcane because it's unforgiving for slightest mistakes in rotation, which you often have to make when raiding mythic or even heroic. Had to move during one of your burn phases? Good luck next pull

- - - Updated - - -

How ti fix arcane:
1) Remove rop
2) Remove rop
3) Remove rop
4) Make evocation castable in movement

RoP is the only fun thing left for mages. Passive bonuses sucks balls

[D3athsting]

RoP is the only fun thing left for mages. Passive bonuses sucks balls

I'm ok with active cooldowns as long as they don't get totally negated by unavoidable mechanics (getting out of fire, soaking etc...)

[Magictricks]

i honestly dont know why they nerfed ROP and the arcane 2 and pcs, if they return those to how they should be arcane would for very well on ST, obvs still lose on multi dot and cleave but it would still be viable.

[Charge me Doctor]

I'm ok with active cooldowns as long as they don't get totally negated by unavoidable mechanics (getting out of fire, soaking etc...)

RoP is not totally negated by avoidable mechanics, RoP now has a huge range and you have all sorts of timers. If burning blade is coming in next 2 seconds and you draw a rune and stand in the very center of it, then burning blade targets you it's completely your fault and you get punished by that. For a 40 seconds cooldown that boosts your damage by 40% it's a fair trade off.

It's not the old RoP that you had to stand in 100% of fight for it to be viable, with, like 5yrd radius. It's way more manageable now. And fun to use. I've never thought "well fuck you blizzard with this CD design" when i fail to use RoP, because it's almost 100% my fault when this happens. The closest analogy i can find to this is popping your arcane power at 20% mana

[satimy]

I can’t keep up with our frost and fire mages. Life is hard without the owl trinket

[Tikishock]

I've learned a few things about WoW during my years of playing. One of them is if a spec has high dps--people will play it. You don't really need any more evidence about how specs are doing other than looking at parse numbers for bosses. Any further analysis just isn't really necessary.

The reason people don't play Arcane is because you get better results as Frost or Fire with less the hassle. This thread can end now.

[Deztru]

Arcane isn't bad, the problem is that the others do comparable or more damage with 80% less thinking

[Talvindius]

Honestly at this point in the expac it's better to just focus on BFA. If Arcane is dogshit now and great in the 1st tier of BFA i'll take the trade.

TBH patch adaptation is just gonna have to be the name of the game from now on. Legion taught us that you need to know how to play all the specs in order to not suck eggs at the bottom of the dps chart.

Just go be a normie and play frost or fire for now and maybe in BFA we'll get the break we deserve. The changes in PTR look promising and with artifact removal arcane may be one of the stronger specs, who knows.

[Soulwell]

Honestly at this point in the expac it's better to just focus on BFA. If Arcane is dogshit now and great in the 1st tier of BFA i'll take the trade.

TBH patch adaptation is just gonna have to be the name of the game from now on. Legion taught us that you need to know how to play all the specs in order to not suck eggs at the bottom of the dps chart.

Just go be a normie and play frost or fire for now and maybe in BFA we'll get the break we deserve. The changes in PTR look promising and with artifact removal arcane may be one of the stronger specs, who knows.

Arcane isn't dogshit. It will be dogshit in bfa when they turn it into a braindead spec again.
What can you say though, with each xpac they make being not a retard almost completely irrelevant in terms of being knowledgable about a spec and forcing it to its maximum potential.

[Talvindius]

Arcane isn't dogshit. It will be dogshit in bfa when they turn it into a braindead spec again.

Careful jumping the gun like that, you might get a cramp.

Nothing says it will be braindead, it's way too early to assume anything. We won't know for sure how Arcane will play until the end of beta when things have been actually tested.