[PvP] Fixing Arcane mages - how ?

[KresnikHellfire]

I've posted this on the official forums, but I was wondering what you folks here at mmo-champ thought about ways to fix arcane mages in PvP:

[quote]I've always preferred arcane for pvp (except the lolspec it was during S5) mainly because the damage is consistent rather than RNG (if you play without shatter like I do) you'll be consistently hitting harder (especially with cooldowns up) rather than spiking your damage, which can be good if you're playing with a partner with good lockdown who can help you get casts off (Rogue, pretty much). You'll have a number of the tools that frost still has (ring of frost, novas) etc while having fewer defenses. It's a mixed bag.

However, it's horribly un-competative in arena at the moment and I wanted to start a discussion about ways to fix this.

What are the problems?

- The knockback from incanter's absorbtion should be a cooldown, rather than RNG when your shield breaks. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the talent and it's been incredibly useful in bgs and whatever, but in a controlled arena environment you might not always be wanting to knock your opponents back - especially since mana shield is your only defense.

- Arcane missiles should be much more rewarding. It really hits for peanuts and I don't understand why it's so weak at all. The fire tree is almost built around pyro procs in PvP, and brain freeze procs for frost can typically crit for 15k or so. When my missiles hit 3 times for 1k each, it's so horribly pathetic. Even talented it wouldn't be much improvement, and 4 talent points is a lot to ask to get a barely noticable damage improvement.

- More mobility for casts is needed. A change that is definetly needed for both PvE and PvP really. The chances of you managing to turret off 4 arcane blasts in a row is very slim, and while arcane barrage and presence of mind are nice, they're really not enough.

- More "tools" are needed. If you compare the trees, each one gets a number of "tools" to help pvp, but arcane gets the duff end of the deal, at least in my mind. Compared to a 5s stun from frost, a 5s disorient from fire etc., all arcane really has is polymorph stun - which is only really nice for opening, and the knockback from mana shield - which as I've mentioned, is not always as useful as it seems.

- More defenses are needed ? Possibly. This would be the tough one to decide. Arcane has always been a glass cannon spec, kill them or be killed, but this is more evident than ever in Cataclysm. Having trouble getting the casts off is one thing, but the only real "defenses" are 12s cooldown mana shield and I guess the 6% damage reduction from prismatic cloak. Compared to ice barrier & double block, cauterise etc, it really doesn't cut it.

What can be fixed ?

- Keep the damage absorbtion part of incanters absorbtion but separate the knockback, giving it a 25s cooldown. Seems in-line with other spec "tools" (dragon's breath, deep freeze) and gives a more reliable way to get away from melee.

- Buff the damage of arcane missiles and arcane barrage. Why not have them consume the damage increase of arcane blast debuff?. I really don't know how this would affect PvE, but in PvP it would reward you when you can get those arcane blast casts off, as well as give you a little bit more mobile damage, and more damage in general.

- Allow arcane missiles to be channelled while moving. A no-brainer really, and fixes some problems in PvE as well.

- Change flame orb to arcane orb (or similar) when specced arcane. I've seen this posted in other threads, and I've no idea why it hasn't been implemented yet. This could be the new "tool" that arcane gets as well, give it some kind of utility to help the spec - an aoe snare, something like that.

- Buff mana shield for arcane spec. For example, it doesn't drain mana, it absorbs more when specced arcane, etc. It's already very nice now for the damage increase but when you don't even live long enough to use the extra spellpower it doesn't really matter.

- Spell idea - Gravity Well. Taken shamelessly from High Priestess Azil, from Stonecore:
"Summons an area of crushing gravity. Any friendly or enemy units caught with 0 yards will be pulled towards the center. This spell deals persistent damage to all enemies within range, causing more damage the closer the target is to the center of the effect. Lasts 20 sec."
This would be a great utility tool for arcane only, it could be tweak to be as powerful/weak as needed but would just give something else to the spec to use in PvP. I'd really like to see this.

[Madd]

Mages already have one viable spec for pvp. As long as each class has one pvp spec, blizzard is okay with that and you should be too.

[KresnikHellfire]

Mages already have one viable spec for pvp. As long as each class has one pvp spec, blizzard is okay with that and you should be too.

And suggesting ideas for how to make more than one spec viable is bad why... ? Besides, I have never seen anything from Blizzard that says they only want one spec to be viable per class, quite the opposite about warriors in fact:

While it would be nice if both specs were equally viable for PvP and PvE, we realize that's a tough goal to meet.

"A tough goal to meet", but still something they'd like to happen.

[Layuth]

And suggesting ideas for how to make more than one spec viable is bad why... ? Besides, I have never seen anything from Blizzard that says they only want one spec to be viable per class, quite the opposite about warriors in fact:

Ok, mages can also PvP as fire. The 1-button pvp spec for mage is already taken.

Blizzard needs to make 1 ROLE for each class viable.

[KresnikHellfire]

Ok, mages can also PvP as fire. The 1-button pvp spec for mage is already taken.

Blizzard needs to make 1 ROLE for each class viable.

I get what you're saying, but if that's your logic then druids & shamans will have 3 viable specs, priests & paladins will have 2 viable specs and everyone else will have 1.

I'm not even trying to troll or trying to offend anyone by saying this. I like arcane, I'm just trying to constructively suggest ways to improve it. I'm sorry if that's upsetting people but it was just an attempt at some intelligent discussion... !

[Madd]

And suggesting ideas for how to make more than one spec viable is bad why... ? Besides, I have never seen anything from Blizzard that says they only want one spec to be viable per class, quite the opposite about warriors in fact:

"A tough goal to meet", but still something they'd like to happen.

I didn't say they only wanted one spec, but a minimum of 1 viable spec per class.

(can't link yet, first part is mmo champion) /content/1733-Deepholm-Blue-posts

I'll quote from it: "We try and balance around specs first, but if we can't quite hit that, we fall back on class. It would be awesome if Fire mages were competitive with Frost mages in Arena, but failing that, at least a mage can have a Fire build for PvE and a Frost build for PvP. If on the other hand mages themselves had no viable spec, then your only choice it to roll an alt. As easy as leveling is these days, it's still not trivial."

[KresnikHellfire]

I'll quote from it: "We try and balance around specs first, but if we can't quite hit that, we fall back on class."

Okay, that kind of just proves the point I'm trying to make - honestly, when I made this thread, I really didn't think the only response I would get was "WE HAVE FROST, ARCANE SHOULDN'T BE VIABLE / thread". The changes I'm suggesting for discussion aren't nerfing frost in any way, they aren't taking anything away from the spec mages already have. I'm not trying to preach the merits of having multiple viable specs, just that in an ideal world there would be multiple viable specs, here are some ideas to help with that goal.

In any case, sorry for starting this :l

[Deleted]

arcane problem is that have NOT mobility

arcane mages need always to cast. i think that the only way is to reduce arcane barrage cd to 2 sec and reduce for arcane by 70% polimorph "healing" effect. remove useless mastery and make a new mastery that incease arcane missiles damage. arcane fixed! xD

sorry for bad english

[Torne]

One change I would like to see that would help arcane in both PvE and PvP would be to be able to cast Missles while moving.

[msdos]

arcane has the same problem that elemental does. its main source of consistent damage is kind of a long cast and must be turreted for a desired effect.

although i'd much rather play arcane in PVP, if arcane got these changes, mages would basically be the coolest class in the game from a design standpoint. mages already get all the cool shit, next to Death Knights.

[Kiso94]

See now you're saying that a class that does lot more dmg in few seconds to have equal amount of tools that a spec which has less spiky damage. If you buff arcane's surrvability, arcane blast would be nerfed, and then you would have whiny mages in PvE.

[KresnikHellfire]

See now you're saying that a class that does lot more dmg in few seconds to have equal amount of tools that a spec which has less spiky damage. If you buff arcane's surrvability, arcane blast would be nerfed, and then you would have whiny mages in PvE.

See that's another point. Like elemental (as someone mentioned), arcane can do a lot of damage by standing there and turretting, but beyond counterspell there's no way to "lock down" your enemy, so you have to rely on your partner to do that which almost exclusively means playing with a rogue.

I'd agree that if they gave the spec some tools you'd have to remove some of the damage - a good thing to look at would be the cooldowns which can be staggered - incanter's absorbtion / mana gem / arcane power / trinket proc gives you an insane amount of spellpower, so many one of those would have to be nerfed.

But really it's just a spec that lacks a few tools to make it successful, like I said in my original post. Now more than even, with the nerfs to fmage damage, that spec is about bringing control alongside some coordinated burst to make it work, while fire also has a larger amount of control alongside some RNG burst. With the very small amount of control offered through improved polymorph and slow, arcane just can't compete.

[Sailboats]

One change I would like to see that would help arcane in both PvE and PvP would be to be able to cast Missles while moving.

Bro u funny.


1 Strong spec (frost) for pvp + another decent spec (fire) for pvp is enough.

[reverendball]

Bro u funny.
1 Strong spec (frost) for pvp + another decent spec (fire) for pvp is enough.

so by your own admission and given that fire is the pve spec, wot is arcane spec supposed to be doing then??


at the OP:

add the Gravity Well effect to the "Arcane Orb" spell
WIN

OR add it to ring of frost :P (making it much harder to run out of it in time )

or, give the orb a silence aura
since you can easily run out of it, its not that OP...... ?

[KresnikHellfire]

so by your own admission and given that fire is the pve spec, wot is arcane spec supposed to be doing then??


at the OP:

add the Gravity Well effect to the "Arcane Orb" spell
WIN

OR add it to ring of frost :P (making it much harder to run out of it in time )

or, give the orb a silence aura
since you can easily run out of it, its not that OP...... ?

Arcane orb creating a gravity well as it moves sounds like an excellent idea. 2 birds with one stone fix !

[Fahren Kaa]

The entire tree needs and will hopefully be rehauled entierly, though I wouldn't get my hopes up. Until this happens, I advise that you waste no more time discussing this horribly unviable PvP and PvE spec.

[Deleted]

If there was anything to be done with defensive cooldowns/shields/survivability for arcane mages - Improved Mirror Images. For example, damage dealt to you is split evenly between you and three images. Negative effects like roots, stuns, fears have their duration split between all images aswell. And shorter cooldown, longer duration, stuff like that. Hell comes with balancing something like that and some problems would arise in case of 4pt10 but still I love the idea.

[Hotfish]

Mobility.

Arcane mages are just lacking mobility. They must permanently root themselves on the ground and just cast, and cast, and cast, in order to output any significant damage.

That's the problem with mage specs. Arcane mages have the damage and decent control, but they have no mobility. Fire mages have the damage and mobility, but they have no control vs players. That leaves us with Frost mages - they have the damage, mobility, AND unparalleled amount of control.

First step in making Arcane viable for PVP/arena? Allow Arcane Blast and Arcane Missiles to be cast while moving (like Scorch).

[Jakmax]

See now you're saying that a class that does lot more dmg in few seconds to have equal amount of tools that a spec which has less spiky damage. If you buff arcane's surrvability, arcane blast would be nerfed, and then you would have whiny mages in PvE.

Do you even play a mage? Arcane damage blows compared to pretty much every other spec in the game. Arcane just needs an all around buff.

[zephid]

Do you even play a mage? Arcane damage blows compared to pretty much every other spec in the game. Arcane just needs an all around buff.

The biggest reason why arcane is behind fire in pve is because of all the movement involved. There wouldn't be any real difference in dps on a patchwerk type of fight, arcane might even beat fire in a pure tank n' spank fight.