Rygarius
Here’s another bit of info I want to pass on sooner rather than waiting for a new build to get to you all, about Arcane Mages.
One of the defining characteristics of Arcane Mages has been that they can trade more mana for more damage, at a decreasing efficiency. In other words, they can play conservative, and use their mana as frugally as possible in order to maximize sustained damage. Or, they can play aggressively and increase their DPS now, in exchange for lower sustained damage over the course of the whole fight.
Arcane’s sustained damage is about where we want it (as well as Fire and Frost), barring some minor tweaks perhaps. But, they’re currently playing very high on their
Detonazione Arcana stacks. The goal is to have their rotations change significantly based on which level 90 talent they pick. An Arcane Mage with
should play very aggressively and frequently stop to recharge their batteries. An Arcane Mage with
Runa del Potere should generally play rather conservative, but stay at relatively high mana to maximize
. And with
Flusso dell'Incantatore, an Arcane Mage should generally play the traditional mix of conserve/burn/evocate.
What we’re actually seeing are all three styles playing much more aggressively than we’re aiming for. There’s effectively a ceiling of just how much you can convert more mana into more damage. Invokers are playing so aggressively that they never drop their
s at all, Rune users are staying at a 4 stack for a majority of the time, and Incanters are able to play more aggressively during their conserve phases and burn longer.
In order to try to solve this, we decided to try raising the ceiling. So, in the next beta build, you’ll find the max
s has been raised from 4 to 6, and the damage increase per stack is back up to 25% from 20%. I’d like to emphasize that the goal of these changes are to create the gameplay flexibility that we’re hoping for there to be with Arcane, not to change Arcane’s overall DPS. There will likely need to be additional changes after this to readjust their damage back to where we want it. Feedback about how it feels, and theorycrafting analyzing the effects this has on them are especially appreciated.