What could make us better?

[Schneeze]

I've been playing Arcane for a while now and have been having a blast. However, outside of Mythic+ and fights like Harjatan, I rarely see any extraordinary performance from the spec - Frost or Fire usually dominate us. So, that got me wondering: what would need to chance for us to perform better? Are there talents that could be improved/removed? Does a baseline ability need to change? Do we simply need a better tier bonus? Or are we just designed in such a way that we simply won't ever perform better than the other two specs?

[Corpze]

There are lots of arcane mages out there who are keeping up with frost and fire specs in M TOS content. If you look at the top parses for each boss (with the exception of fallen avatar) you will find arcane mages doing comparable DPS to either spec. I'm not sure what content you're referring to when you say that frost/fire mages beat arcane. Maybe in the lower brackets?

[magictricks]

2pc should be 15% damage for 10 seconds, we would be top dps.

[Clutchykins]

My personal opinion is that people would rather play the easier specs than Arcane, and I don't blame them. But in my opinion, the damage steroid that is AP is more important than the other main cooldowns for Frost and Fire and really benefits raiding. Think of all of the transitional damage that is needed for phase mechanics and how a properly timed Arcane Power benefits pushing down adds or a new phase, the difference it makes to have that extra damage is very noticeable. I believe this spec has the highest skill curve but it doesn't come through patchwork style encounters, but vast knowledge of the mechanics of the class and the boss encounter you are going through. This is only talking about raiding, too, in M+ we are the best. The only times I've been completely destroyed in meters by other Mages that aren't Arcane are when they hold significant gear advantages, otherwise it has been negligible. I'm still trying to imagine a world where we still had Legion release Mage with the haste buff mechanic, that was a whole new level of skill needed to play a class and was so risk/reward it was addictive.

[Sageless]

One needed change is to revert the visual on Arcane Explosion.

The current one is such a pain in the ass, that it is currently banned in my raid group. Which means not playing arcane on AoE fights, and on ST it is more difficult to play than fire or frost so why would you gear for that?

So two things are needed:
- Different visual on Arcane Explosion so you don't give every raider (including yourself) migraines
- Make the 'slipstream' talent baseline and add the 'Ice floes' talent in its place

These changes would give you some more mobility and playability.

[engaged]

I totally agree with Clutchykins. I went absolutely ham when they removed Quickening, made forums posts etc. Instead of removing that choice they should've added better alternatives for people who didn't wanna deal with that hastestacking mechanic. I had so much fun on bosses like Helya, spider and heart in Emerald Nightmare. It made you do really stupid or highrisk things sometimes like blinking in close to get that one Arcane Explosion to keep the buff up when you didn't have time to cast, then go maniac after next evo and get back up on those dmg meters. It was high rewards for dealing with it and fun aswell.

[Roku]

Balancing a spec that is entirely burst is quite tricky, arcane can do some decent damage with the right rng and good execution but mistakes are punished very hard, instead of buffing our output they should make certain parts more forgiving, for example, presence of mind should have a 10-20 sec duration so it's not massively punishing if you don't have a macro to cancel the buff on aoe fights, fix arcane missiles so that you can't snapshot rule of threes and vice versa, make rune of power an instant cast without a gcd, have tier 21 remove gcd from barrage, I would also like kilt to be baseline at this stage because it feels bad to not use it even if its a dps gain. I don't think slipstream should be basline because then we would be a very very mobile ranged burst dps, we're already mobile enough.

[Abscond]

So what you just said is you want arcane to be easier to play. That's dogshit the only fun part about the spec is that if you do one the wrong your dps gets mutilated. If I wanted to play some press this button until this lights up I'd play fire or frost.
The only thing that needs to be changed about arcane is the unlucky factor when it comes to missles. We should have something like fire to increase chance each time we use an ability that can proc missles. Sometimes you get an entire opener without a single one but then you also get times where each blast is a missle proc so I'm quite unsure how to go about that.

[gurudox]

I think Arcane mechanics are mostly in a good place - I agree with the challenging gameplay.

Honestly the only thing I think the spec could use is a reworking of our cleave, since we get mutilated on 2-target fights. Touch of the Magi is really underwhelming as an artifact trait. Perhaps a chance to echo your arcane blast on your previous target for a fraction of the damage or something - I don't know.

[Poly]

I like the way arcane plays right now. I think increasing the value that mastery has for arcane by 30%-40% would be a good solution. So having a lot of mastery gear doesnt feel as bad as it does right now. This would also increase our damage output overall and make the spec feel less punishing if you drop too low in mana.

[Sharjar]

I like the way Arcane plays, especially with the set bonuses. I can't imagine not having something alter gameplay like that. I'm hoping the Azerite gear does a similar thing.

Our performance is massively determined by our knowledge of the fight and knowing when best to use cooldowns and how to manage mana. We're not the go to cleave spec and I don't mind that. Our burst damage is amazing when everything is in our favour. I burst for over 5mil on a ST with TW on pull and at least 1 or 2 missile procs with t19 2 piece and t20 4 piece at ilvl 939 using Medallion and a crappy 860 Arcanocrystal (the rng gods have not blessed me.) The burst is so high that on a fight like Coven of Shivara I usually kill 1 Aman'thul add all by myself with the amount I burst for. I like how bursty we are. Our conserve is a bit meh but I feel t21 is a way to counter that. The only thing I really don't like about Arcane, in fact, I hate about Arcane is Erosion. It's boring and a pain when you have to target switch unless you have AM procs but the other 2 in that row are pants. You'd only take UM if you're stacking a tonne of haste and only on a ST fight. No one uses Nether Tempest for anything but if you were to it would be in a sustained and stacked AoE fight. They either need to change that whole row to make it more interesting so that there is choice or just remove Erosion and add something else in place.

The only reason I haven't changed my tier yet is because I need the t21 to TF and be a 4 piece made up of Head, Shoulder, Chest and Hands. I use 2 piece in AoE fights.