The new set bonuses for 9.2 have been announced for Arcane Mages!
- 奥术明晰 (2-Set) Increases your Arcane damage to enemies affected by 大法师之触 by 18%.
- 奥术明晰 (4-Set) After consuming 8 节能施法 your next 大法师之触 is instant, incurs no cooldown and lasts for 6 sec.
The first of these is simple and a welcome bonus to our in-cooldown damage. It looks to be a solid increase in damage (~8-9%), and while it is not a very interesting bonus, in conjunction with the 4-Set it could have some gameplay implications. The 4-Set, however, is the more interesting discussion. The 4-Set could go many different ways depending on how it is implemented in-game that trying to quantify it now is fruitless. It is important to note that 8
节能施法 procs takes about 1 minute, which will be rather close to
折磨之镜 and
奥术强化 cooldowns with the covenant legendary effect being baked in for
折磨之镜 and the added ranks of
奥术奇才 for
奥术强化.
4-Set Implementation Situations (click to read more)
If the free
大法师之触 is only castable when
大法师之触 is off cooldown (effectively demanding you use the free proc first before your normal
大法师之触 cast), Kyrian Arcane Mages will find some frustrations when using the free proc, as there is not only a need to get charges for
璀璨火花 (the cast time reduction on
奥术冲击 is important for getting every spell inside the window). However, Venthyr Arcane Mages will still likely get a lot of value from this free
大法师之触 in this scenario, since they have less emphasis on a single hit and the added
大法师之触 uptime during
奥术强化 will be more than welcome (though some preliminary findings may suggest its not worth casting
大法师之触 during
奥术强化 to take advantage of this).
If the free
大法师之触 explosion contributes to the normal casted
大法师之触, this will certainly necessitate casting one and the other before the first explodes, this could make the rotation very clunky, specifically for Kyrian as you would need to do some odd behavior of ramping
璀璨火花, free
大法师之触, finishing
璀璨火花, recasting
大法师之触 after
奥术弹幕 so that the first
大法师之触 expires into it.
If the free
大法师之触 and normal
大法师之触 can be stacked, you would likely follow the same logic above, however you would want to cast both
大法师之触’s back-to-back. Likewise, if none of the above are true scenarios, this lends itself to a 2nd smaller cooldown window which could be particularly interesting for Mikanikos in aoe with the shorter
璀璨火花 cooldown.
It's important to note that there are many implementation situations apart from the ones listed above, I just wanted to give provide some examples to show the scope of how important the implementation is for the 4-Set bonus for Arcane.
Overall, the tier sets as they stand now should provide large bonuses in ST and AOE, though the 4-Set will rely heavily on how it can be leveraged. Personally, I am a fan of how the set bonuses focus on
大法师之触, as a universally good spell. However, I am not a fan of the 4-Set’s potential restrictions. There is also currently a lot of buggy behavior baked into
节能施法 procs and powers that interact with the buff, which is why I anticipate potential issues with this set bonus in that regard.
My hopes currently are that the free
大法师之触 cast won’t require
大法师之触 to be off cooldown, whether it stacks in some way or not I am indifferent on, although I doubt Blizzard will let us achieve that level of burst. Among the suggestions I have read recently that might help would be to have
大法师之触 reapply at the reduced duration after its explosion or just increasing the base duration of
大法师之触, this would certainly help to alleviate what will most certainly be difficult theorycrafting ahead to determine the best uses for this set bonus proc.