Sup. I’m
Dikembe, author of the
Arcane guide on Altered Time, maintainer of the Arcane APL and part-time contributor to the Mage module in SimC.
Arcane’s playstyle and shortcomings that persisted throughout Legion has lead to a rather extensive rework of the specialization and several of its core abilities. I will attempt to discuss these changes to the best of my ability, but it should be noted that Arcane is still very much in flux at the time of this writing. Numbers tuning is all over the place, as it is with most classes, but talent design and balance is still in its nascent stage, with one of our L100 talents remaining entirely unimplemented.
Arcane ChargesSpells that generate and that are modified by Arcane Charges have changed quite a bit.
Arcane Missiles and
Arcane Explosion no longer build Arcane Charges, nor receive the damage bonus or mana cost increase per stack.
Arcane Blast is therefore left as the sole baseline generator of Arcane Charges.
Arcane Barrage and
Resonance are negatively impacted by these changes in AoE situations. Lacking an AoE option to rebuild charges, the “
Arcane Explosion,
Arcane Barrage, repeat” rotation is no longer feasible. Even worse, what was once the primary source of damage for multiple targets,
Arcane Explosion, practically loses all relevance due to how weak it is, and its unsustainability on higher target counts. On the other hand,
Arcane Missiles actually benefits when removed from its interaction with Arcane Charges. Whereas in Legion, a player would often be forced to sit on procs until reaching 4 Arcane Charges, in Battle for Azeroth it can be used immediately. This prevents the player from being punished for having good RNG and allows missiles to feel more smoothly integrated into the rotation.
Arcane MissilesArcane Missiles itself has also been reworked from a proc ability with max stacks akin to
Fingers of Frost to an on demand ability with substantial mana cost. To compensate for its mana cost, a new proc called
Clearcasting has been added that will allow
Arcane Missiles or
Arcane Explosion to be cast for free. A notable side effect of this change is that
Slipstream receives a massive buff, as the player can effectively trade mana for mobility, which can provide some interesting gameplay decisions in identifying what’s more important at a particular moment: raw damage output or survivability.
Unfortunately, its damage is very low at this time. In Legion,
Arcane Missiles procs provided a substantial amount of single-target damage and boasted a very high damage per execute time, making it a very high priority action, while simultaneously serving as a means to limit the overly mana negative rotation. In Battle for Azeroth, the current implementation of
Arcane Missiles would be valued solely for its ability to regulate mana consumption. The spell is still undergoing a lot of changes on alpha, including multiple adjustments to channel time and damage, so this is something that is still clearly a target for tuning.
Mana Consumption and the Overpowered ParadoxOne of the more noticeable changes in Battle for Azeroth is the overall rate of mana consumption is drastically lower. The mana cost penalty applied to
Arcane Blast by each Arcane Charge has been reduced, which means that the typical 4x
Arcane Blast is closer to mana neutral depending on
Arcane Missiles luck. This makes mana expenditure less volatile, allowing some room for error and the ability to “float” at a given mana level for a period of time. This should be good news for
Mystic Kilt of the Rune Master users who were concerned about losing their safety blankets.
However, the nature of Arcane’s mana consumption is still largely the same as it was in Legion, adhering to rigid timings to synchronize it between
Rune of Power,
Arcane Power and
Evocation.
Overpowered will again be a mainstay and continue to be difficult to separate from Arcane. The damage increase is strong, and the mana cost reduction enables burn phases to be entered at any mana level, thereby increasing DPS outside of
Arcane Power by allowing more mana to be safely spent. The redesigned Temporal Flux has not been implemented at this stage, so we don’t know exactly how it works or how it will match up to
Overpowered.
In fact, it needs to be stated that reconciling what appears to be Blizzard’s intentions for Arcane with the existence of
Overpowered is a difficult endeavor. It seems that mana, as both a thematic device and gameplay element, is meant to be of great importance and central to the specialization.
Overpowered all but removes mana from the equation entirely, however, confining Arcane to a playstyle based around strict cooldown timings and hopefully not hitting zero mana in between. The talent in its current form is therefore antithetical to the presumed objectives for Arcane.
Talent BalanceWith respect to talents as a whole, there was very little variation in talent selection in Legion.
Charged Up was an option for single-target, and
Shimmer versus
Slipstream was mostly preference. These were likely the only considerations an Arcane Mage had regarding talents in a raid environment. More viable options in the major offensive tiers going forward, combined with reigning in the effects of the more powerful talents, would be welcome changes.
Arcane has received two new talents in its level 15 tier,
Rule of Threes and
Equipoise.
Rule of Threes appears to be the stronger option of the two, lessening the effect of Arcane Charge on mana cost. With the low damage of
Arcane Missiles, however, it is difficult opting not to spend a
Rule of Threes proc on
Arcane Blast. Perhaps on more hectic, high mobility encounters where micro-adjustments occur more frequently than
Clearcasting procs, it would be worth trading DPS for mobility.
Equipoise adds additional projectiles to
Arcane Missiles above 80% mana, incentivizing the player to float above that threshold. While more powerful than its Legion cousin, Words of Power, it has one drawback that talent did not: it becomes useless below the mana threshold. This may prove overly restrictive on rotations, as there is very little room for any excess mana expenditure, either by error or the appearance of a new priority target that has to be quickly dealt with.
Other tiers also continue to suffer from imbalance.
As long as Arcane retains its burst-centric playstyle,
Rune of Power will be far and away the clear favorite in its tier, encounter permitting. This has not yet changed in Battle for Azeroth.
Overpowered and Temporal Flux, for example, both directly involve burst phase damage output. While the former continues to enable and grossly empower bursts, the latter sounds like it would be only relevant in post-burst contexts, as the effect would be wasted otherwise if mana were not immediately “re-burned” after
Evocation. Again, as Temporal Flux has yet to be implemented, it cannot be confirmed how it will work or when it might prove useful.
Rune of Power’s only competition comes from
Incanter's Flow, not justified by how much better that talent is than the others, but simply by
Rune of Power being unviable for the situation. The iconic
Mirror Image seems poised to continue being a source of nostalgia instead of damage. Similarly,
Erosion remains the default choice in its tier, not by virtue of how powerful it is, but rather how underwhelming the other options are.
WIth Blizzard’s repeated allusions to moving away from the traditional “single-target, AoE, stun” organization of talents, some shuffling of abilities could be in order here. In particular, swapping
Charged Up with
Nether Tempest is of consideration. This would at least move closer towards rows of talents providing not wholly dissimilar functions, but still offer variations to gameplay. In other words,
Resonance,
Nether Tempest and
Supernova all have an AoE focus, whereas
Unstable Magic and
Charged Up have a single-target focus. A mix between passive and active talents, as well as minor differences in efficacy for specific scenarios, all provide decisions for the player to make that are not completely binary. For example, when maximizing raw damage output where it is needed most, choosing between
Nether Tempest for sustained AoE,
Resonance for cleaving off priority targets,
Supernova for burst AoE. Or, when electing to err on the side of safety rather than optimization, choosing the passive
Unstable Magic over the active
Charged Up.
Erosion does not fit well into this reorganization strategy and would likely need some kind of redesign itself.
Secondary StatsArcane’s relationship with its secondary stats remains troubled, with regard to Haste and Mastery especially. In Legion, Mastery was valued relative to Haste, meaning that a player wanted enough Mastery (mana) to support their Haste (mana use). While perhaps an interesting interaction from a mathematical standpoint, for gameplay it effectively punishes the player for getting better gear, as Haste will increase the cost of the overall rotation. The burden of this has been lessened by the reduction of the mana penalty per stack of Arcane Charge, but persists nonetheless, and will likely do so as long as mana regen does not scale with Haste.
On top of this, Mastery devalues further due to its loss of relevance in AoE. With the aforementioned changes to Arcane Charges,
Arcane Explosion no longer receives the damage buff per stack. As
Mastery: Savant only applies to abilities affected by Arcane Charge, usage of
Arcane Explosion is not incentivized by Mastery. In fact, some preliminary tests that we have done have shown a traditionally single-target rotation (spamming
Arcane Blast) preferable to an AoE rotation (spamming
Arcane Explosion) on lower target counts.
Final ThoughtsArcane will continue to go through a lot of iterations before reaching its eventual final state in Battle for Azeroth. While several of the current changes are most welcome and address some of the pain points that lingered throughout Legion, there are missteps therein, and some major flaws that remain unaddressed. The overall design of the specialization is very much a work in progress, and players invested in Arcane should be proactive in helping Blizzard coalesce these ideas from their nascent states into something concrete and enjoyable in Battle for Azeroth.
