Arcane mages for BFA "early alpha"

[Kemya]

Arcane Barrage additional hits damage reduced from 50% to 40% , and Cost changed from 0.5% of base mana to None

Arcane blast Mana cost increased by 125%100% per Arcane Charge, same thing with arcane explosion

the interesting changes are :-

Arcane missles cast time is now 3 seconds and DOESN'T need a proc, Cost changed from None to 18.0% of base mana

new proc called clear casting : For each 1% of your maximum mana you spend, you have a 2.5% chance to gain Clearcasting, making your next Arcane Missiles cost no mana.

evocation now has no cooldown

and new two talents :-

Rule of Threes (NYI) When you gain your third Arcane Charge, your next spell costs no mana.
Tier 1 Talent, in place of Amplification

NEW Mana Adept While you are above 80% mana, Arcane Missiles fires 2 additional missiles.
Tier 1 Talent, in place of Arcane Familiar


this is all from wowhead, remember this is early alpha and everything is subject to change

[nirdana]

It would be interesting to have hard hitting abilities with insane mana cost. You would be then casting evocation for 30% time to be able use spells

[Enimonemo]

The only logical reason I can find to this change is, that we get to keep slipstream which allows us to use AM as a ranged filler ability.

[Neuroburner]

evocation now has no cooldown

It's pretty strange because of 56lvl passive http://bfa.wowhead.com/spell=231565/evocation.
And I think new Clearcasting will be changed because mastery effect will increase max mana and it will be direct nerf to passive efficiency.

[magictricks]

from what i can tell you are free to hit missiles and AB when ever you want, but to do good damage you are going to have to clear on 4 stacks and stay above 80%, unless you get a clearcasting in which case you can fire missiles when you get to 4.

looks like HFC which was mega lame tbh (not the damage but the way you played, the damage was obviously sick.).

[Schneeze]

MMO Champion seems to have different notes for Arcane:

- nothing about Evocation
- Arcane Blast does 55% SP, not 192.4% SP

That second one is important, as WoWHead's Blast would do over double the damage of Missiles while MMOC's Blast would do little more than half of Missiles' damage. Whichever notes are true will change the spell priority.

Anyway, here are my thoughts on what we have so far:

- It seems that Clearcasting can allow Missiles to proc off itself. You can't chain them together, since the second one costs no mana, but it's intriguing that this can happen in the first place

- Temporal Flux is fascinating, depending on how it works. With it, it seems you want to go into another mini burn after each Evocation, squeezing in at least two casts of Blast or Missiles (whichever is higher priority) for absolutely free. I do wonder what "you gain its effect again" actually means in game. Are we forced into a channel for the next 6 seconds, or is it regen that happens passively? The latter would be absolutely busted, but the former seems too clunky.

- Given the 18% mana cost of Missiles, does that mean that if I cast Missiles twice in a row at full mana, would both casts gain the benefit of the Mana Adept talent or only the first?

[TonyEx]

I'm trying to figure out the intended playstyle for this iteration of Arcane Mage, so I have a lot of questions. We'll still have a burn phase with Arcane Power still existing, but will we have a conserve? With Evo not having a cooldown, I'd suggest not. From the chat here, maybe working the clearcasting proc so that it can be the replacement mechanic for the conserve phase?

Depending on how the numbers and stat squish turn out, will Missiles still be a strong spell (and now worth the mana cost), or will it be used as a filler for short movement phases?

I'm just filled with a lot of "I dunno".

[davesignal]

The fact that people are even entertaining the idea that Evocation won't have a CD is bewildering to me. It's a datamining error.

Based on the data presented, I imagine the spec works much like it does now. The only differences are:

1.) You can cast Arcane Missiles at any time, for an even larger (and more inefficient) burn than even AB4 spam. You probably never hardcast Arcane Missiles unless you are in desperate need for immediate DPS or mana is currently worthless (i.e. the new Temporal Flux is active), except maybe during Arcane Power
2.) Clearcasting procs take the place of Arcane Missiles procs. During the conserve phase you probably don't cast AM unless Clearcasting procs (or you talent into Rule of Threes and that procs).

The interesting part is mostly the talents. Rule of Threes and Temporal Flux look interesting, and if that's the way Blizzard is going in allowing talents to futz with our mana management paradigm then I'm into it.

[gurudox]

I've had a chance to play the F&F Alpha and check out the early build for Arcane.

Evocation has it's regular cooldown. Temporal Flux is not yet implemented, so there's not much information on how it works, though.

Arcane Barrage hits HARD - generally harder than a 4-stack AB, but probably not as hard as a 4-stack AM. I can see this being a meaningful part of our rotation now, and the decision making will still be about balancing our mana based on the options we have.

I feel like Rule of Threes will be the go-to in dungeons/raiding for long-term mana efficiency, as it will allow an extra cast of missiles/blast whenever you hit 3 arcane charges. The kicker is that you have to reset your stacks regularly in order to benefit from Rule of Threes, but the good news is that Barrage does a good amount of damage like I mentioned above.

Clearcasting seems a little underwhelming where it's at right now. I didn't get many procs. I think this will be the area that Blizzard does the most to balance arcane.

Mana Adept paired with Slipstream is a great combo for questing. Basically, you just build your arcane charges up to 4, and then you only attack mobs using Arcane Missiles while kiting them with slow. The Mana Adept talent allows you to get 3 extra missile hits as long as you're above 80% mana. So, eat in between pulls if you have to, but mana regens to above 80% pretty easily between pulls anyways. It felt really accessible, and I think that it will make arcane more appealing to a wider group of players.

[davesignal]

If ABarr hits hard, and Mana Adept is good, I wonder if we'll see a return to Cata-style mana-neutral/mana-regen conserve phases-- maybe using Arcane Barrage at two charges and hard casting Arcane Missiles every time you regen above 80% mana (or timing it in conjunction with Incanter's Flow, such that you only hard cast AM at 4 or 5 stacks of the buff).

God, I wish I had beta access.

[magictricks]

just do 3 AB and you get missiles for free then ABr.

[Ryken]

Mana Adept paired with Slipstream is a great combo for questing. Basically, you just build your arcane charges up to 4, and then you only attack mobs using Arcane Missiles while kiting them with slow. The Mana Adept talent allows you to get 3 extra missile hits as long as you're above 80% mana. So, eat in between pulls if you have to, but mana regens to above 80% pretty easily between pulls anyways. It felt really accessible, and I think that it will make arcane more appealing to a wider group of players.

Arcane charges do no affect Arcane Missile damage at all. Missile damage is always the same. No need to get to 4 stacks before you kite with Missiles. Also 80%+ is 2 extra missiles, not 3.

I agree though, slipstream+Adept is fun. Rares melt with AP+AM spam at 80%+ mana.

[Eyliria]

Arcane seems really boring watching people play it.
You run out of mana way too fast. What are you supposed to do for AOE now that you can barely get 10 arcane explosions in before you go oom? You have a little over 54k mana, but no-stack Arcane explosion still costs 5k mana to cast... I get it, spamming arcane explosion @ 4 charges is something they want to get rid of in order to curb arcane's obscene AOE burst, but as it is, you find your aoe really limited and having to revert to single target dmg and letting barrage do work.


Everything costs more mana to cast (relatively speaking), our mana regen sources were reduced (no more mark of aluneth, so there goes 20% of our mana bar every minute)... and the new clearcasting mechanic gives us a whopping 40% chance of getting 1 mana free spell per entire mana bar we use.


I'm just going to chalk it up to "It's Alpha, chill".

But right now, it kind of sucks.

[Schneeze]

You run out of mana way too fast. What are you supposed to do for AOE now that you can barely get 10 arcane explosions in before you go oom? You have a little over 54k mana, but no-stack Arcane explosion still costs 5k mana to cast... I get it, spamming arcane explosion @ 4 charges is something they want to get rid of in order to curb arcane's obscene AOE burst, but as it is, you find your aoe really limited and having to revert to single target dmg and letting barrage do work.

It sucks because an older version of the Rule of Threes talent made it so after gaining your 3rd charge, ANY ability cast afterwards is free. With that iteration, I could see the AoE rotation being something like AB x3 > AE > ABarr to get a reasonable amount of cheaper AEs off, but now it looks like our ST is the only thing getting love. I guess they want us to use Nether Tempest, but doing some quick math just makes that ability keep looking ass :/

[Eyliria]

In that case I would say you nix the talent because it's not good design if all the options are fake-choices when there's a clear best like that.
Honestly the biggest offender here is Clearcasting. It's just bad, and because of the way it procs, you end up using it on a free AB most of the time.

The old AM proc mechanic was fine. I dont know why they are trying to fuck with something that wasn't broken.

[Kiavis]

Question about Rule of Threes: if you cast charged up, does that make your next spell free? You technically gained the third charge, it was just at the same time as the fourth charge, rendering a four charge AB free.

[magictricks]

Change ABr to single target, but it applies nether tempest at the relevant AC level.