Copy paste typo in the first paragraph saying “Fire Mage” instead of Arcane.I echo the sentiment that Arcane Surge is a much better cooldown than Arcane Power although, frankly, that in of itself isn’t saying much since AP was nothing but a glorified on use trinket. The Arcane Orb talents definitely need major changes beyond moving them higher up in the tree. The capstone talents are just awful. Charged Orb is fine for PvP but lackluster and pretty pointless in PvE. Orb Barrage is just plain bad. If anything it should be 15 missile HITS not casts. It is terrible design for AO, which is an AoE spell, to be tied to AM which is ST. Overall it feels like a half baked attempt to give us something like Legion’s Mantle of the First Kirin Tor which was universally beloved but it falls flat. That brings me to another point and that is if they’re going to make legendary effects into talents then why not give us the unquestionably better Legion legendary effects and instead choose to double down on the boring and watered down SL ones?At the end of the day, while I hate being cynical, it almost seems as though they purposely made the trees awful and lacking in synergy in their first iteration just so they can then say that they listened to feedback and “corrected” them.P.S. I really wish people would stop complaining that Meteor feels out of place for Frost and Arcane because it’s a fire spell. First of all, mages are supposed to be able to use all 3 elements from a lore perspective and also the vast majority of players have always lamented the loss of that after Blizzard decided to go down the path of single element specs. Second, and this is key, it’s an amazing and visually stunning spell and just because it’s doesn’t fit into a particular meta rotation doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have it! I am really going to be ticked off if they remove it because of all the nonsensical whining on this non issue.
I just hope one day I can find someone willing to commit to me as much as Blizzard developers are committed to Rune of Power.
I think blizzard just does not know what playstyle they want to achieve with arcane. Everything I see looks very clumsy and I think this is another "we don't want you to play this class for now" case. I'd like it if they did a total overhaul, keep the mana game but all the rest can f right off. Start over and take fantasy inspiration from sage (BDO) and doctor strange stuff but keep the purple/blue :) or give us at least the option of choosing between goldish or purpleish wizard.
The fact that all Mages use Arcane magic to cast their spells and yet Fire STILL has the largest kit is absolutely criminal. Yes, it's great that we're getting access to DB, but making Greater Invisibility a talent is going to take Arcane from arguably the tankiest spec in raid (when played preemptively) to the squishiest for the sake of damage. We're talking about Mages here, if you ask them to pick between baseline abilities and damage, the answer is always going to be damage.Some things should just be baseline. Mana gem should not be a talent, or if it has to be, at least make it an "improved" mana gem that actually does something and doesn't have the clunky interaction that requires us to delete it every other pull.Devs, please listen to Porom and continue iterating on the Arcane tree. It's a great start but if it goes live in the current state the spec's population is going to drop even lower than it already is. BUFF ARCANE MAGE
Giving up Evocation doesn't seem viable in longer encounters but will have to see how the barrage mana refund works with a practical "live fight" rotation. Also seems like an error to give up Greater Invisibility and Time Anomaly due to the 60% defensive CD. I feel like you would be hard pressed to utilize Mirror Images, Ice Block, Dragon's Breath, Shifting Power, Meteor, Alter Time, Ice Nova, and Radiant Spark with this build. That is an ungodly number of buttons all with whacky CD's.. Ice floes was also a strange pickup but subjective for sure.Here was my first take of a practical raid build. I don't have alpha access to mess with it but this was simply converting the current arcane kit to dragonflight talents. https://www.cuckhead.com/beta/talent-calc/mage/arcane/BMFEGBUFSokPFFCQQOVSZERUURQagFAQA
I was mad when Mantle of the First Kirin Tor didnt make it into shadowlands legendaries. Im even madder now that it didnt make it into the new talent trees and instead we have Orb Barrage which is basically rubbing salt in the wound.Doing M+ as arcane with that legendary during legion was the most fun i had playing arcane ever.
Whoever wrote this did it fast. There are some synergy with Time Anomoly and Arcane Surge which was failed to pickup that would allow you to bypass evocation in theory. Without it You'll still need evocation as your mana regen will be poop. This also solves the "No greater invis problem" Shifting power has super low value for arcane from a pve standpoint. I know it has value for pvp but pve wize it's really really bad. especially as without conduits it's stuck at 10 seconds.Edit: Looking at how this is structured I have a feeling it was copy pasted from someone else's work.
I still belive WotLK arcane was one of the most fun iteration everYou only would have to get some cleave and the spec would be ready to ship
The 2 button rotation? Pass
The fact that this article does not even discuss any build without Arcane Harmony/Radiant Spark really hammers home for me how destructive those two abilities have been for Arcane's identity as a spec, and the consequences of not pruning degenerate playstyles before they spiral out of control like Blizzard did with the Quickening shenanigans way back when. Instead of taking the spec back to basics and playing up the unique position of Arcane as the only DPS spec that actually gives a %^&* about that big blue bar they're leaning heavier into turning Arcane into not just another dull builder/spender spec, but one that barely actually even casts its trademark spell-- Arcane Blast-- in lieu of spending 80% of the fight plinking away at a boss with a channeled spell that somehow manages to feel even less impactful than Mind Flay.Now we're in some sort of nightmare scenario where Blizzard is trying to support the Kyrian playstyle while giving lip service to actual builds that actually play like arcane mage and as a result they've done neither well. Even with as little to occupy their time as Kyrian arcane mages have I very much doubt they want to deal with the hassle of having to use a ground target spell in their burst combo, the spec tree is full of spells that mean absolutely nothing to Kyrian gameplay (Impetus, Nether Precision, etc), people who were praying this would be an opportunity to go back to actually playing arcane are left holding the bag, and on top of that the actual class tree is a disaster for everyone.What a sad state of affairs.Edit:
Reading over these comments makes me really sad to know that so many folks are saying they just won’t play Arcane anymore if this goes live, though I certainly don’t blame them. I was also in the group of players who quit SL altogether rather that play the Kyrian Harmony build and voiced concerns a long time ago that if Blizzard doubled down on this build going forward, long time Arcane players simply won’t return or if they do they will just play a different spec or class.It will be devastating to the Arcane community which was already so small and really does a huge disservice to the game as a whole essentially destroying one of the most unique and interesting specs when there is such incredible lore and assets already exciting in the game that they could tap into to create a truly wonderful spec.And they don’t even have to put in the work because the community has already done it for them! Just give the people what they’ve been asking for like some of the amazing assets that you’ve used for Jaina and Khadgar over the years and also give us the freaking Legion legendaries back instead of these horrible BfA and SL versions which no one wants!Oh and also one last word: Frostfire bolt!
For the harmony build haters. Arcane has always had the identity of insane burst. How that is attained has evolved over years and years. And more than anything it's touch that altered gameplay and it's their direction with arcane surge that is changing it again.Also you might not like it but harmony build fixes one of arcane's long standing issues. Ranged aoe potential.Oh and blue bar needs much finer management on kyrian build than the nm burst conserve style as you can't conserve to save up.Oh and if you can't see it. Maybe you're blind, there's a potential always burst on build where you forego harmony but keep echo and barrage increase. Then use a 60 second evo with time anomoly and burst with mini conserves.Removed Part
I hope that Blizzars is watching and listening. I swear no matter how good the expansion is, I won't buy it if arcane mage is not well designed as I don't want to play any other spec or class. Also i don't understand how SL spells are just added to the tree instead of being renamed and icons changed. I don't even want to remember SL and being reminded about it all the time with these icons.
Not sure what or where the hate comes from the kyrian build since it has a pretty dynamic play style in trying to fit the rotation into small windows, essentially giving arcane a mini game to play on when and where to burst.That being said, meteor needs go away and allow possibly mirrors of torment to sit there. This would give a new playstyle of gatling gunning arcane missiles instead of always relying on arcane barrage. Change nether tempest to something more in line with: For its duration, Arcane missiles will ricochet and hit up to 5 additional targets for 55% of normal damage.Arcane Familiar and rule of three need to change places, actually just get rid of rule of 3 and change it to Arcane Thought: Reduce cast time of arcane blast by 40%I think i would attack the overall tree this way in design. The left side should be missile focus and the right side should be barrage centric and let us build how we want instead of wandering aimlessly around the tree. This would give us two play styles to pick from and possibly a hybrid build that MIGHT work out. BaseLine orb for gods sake, AND a talent that increases crit rate and or crit damage of barrage. Shifting surge is a trap spell with no conduits or talents to affect it so I wont be taking that.