The new set bonuses for 9.2 have been announced for Arcane Mages!
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
Idées claires procs takes about 1 minute, which will be rather close to
Miroirs de tourment and
Pouvoir des Arcanes cooldowns with the covenant legendary effect being baked in for
Miroirs de tourment and the added ranks of
Prodige des Arcanes for
Pouvoir des Arcanes.
4-Set Implementation Situations (click to read more)
If the free
Toucher des magi is only castable when
Toucher des magi is off cooldown (effectively demanding you use the free proc first before your normal
Toucher des magi cast), Kyrian Arcane Mages will find some frustrations when using the free proc, as there is not only a need to get charges for
Étincelle radieuse (the cast time reduction on
Déflagration des Arcanes is important for getting every spell inside the window). However, Venthyr Arcane Mages will still likely get a lot of value from this free
Toucher des magi in this scenario, since they have less emphasis on a single hit and the added
Toucher des magi uptime during
Pouvoir des Arcanes will be more than welcome (though some preliminary findings may suggest its not worth casting
Toucher des magi during
Pouvoir des Arcanes to take advantage of this).
If the free
Toucher des magi explosion contributes to the normal casted
Toucher des magi, 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
Étincelle radieuse, free
Toucher des magi, finishing
Étincelle radieuse, recasting
Toucher des magi after
Barrage des Arcanes so that the first
Toucher des magi expires into it.
If the free
Toucher des magi and normal
Toucher des magi can be stacked, you would likely follow the same logic above, however you would want to cast both
Toucher des magi’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
Étincelle radieuse 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
Toucher des magi, 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
Idées claires 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
Toucher des magi cast won’t require
Toucher des magi 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
Toucher des magi reapply at the reduced duration after its explosion or just increasing the base duration of
Toucher des magi, this would certainly help to alleviate what will most certainly be difficult theorycrafting ahead to determine the best uses for this set bonus proc.