Arcane - What was it meant to be?

[Andromath]

Good morning/afternoon/evening my fellow mages.

I wanted to open up a discussion about one of my favorite mage specs, Arcane. The spec itself didn't really become viable as a DPS spec on it's own until Wrath, although Burning Crusade did give it a solid buff by providing it with a primary DPS spell other than Arcane Missiles. Given that Turtle WoW aims to remain true to Vanilla WoW, I'm curious as to what everyone thinks Arcane was meant to be.

Fire feels like it was supposed to be the primary DPS spec for mage, although given immunities and how the first handful of raids had plenty of fire immune enemies, it feels like Frost was the only choice in Vanilla for the longest time. Frost was clearly designed for a more defensive playstyle with a better shield and slowing effects to kite enemies around.

So what was Arcane supposed to be?

To me, it feels like Arcane was supposed to be a utility tree, but that it never quite made it that far. Buffs like Amplify/Dampen Magic have talents to buff them, there are others to reduce an enemy's ability to resist arcane spells, etc... Adding in Brilliance Aura feels like a natural fit to the tree and Arcane Mage, providing more utility for a party.

[Massie2]

Arcane right now is the "Mana" spec. Tons of mana-supplementing talents (15% regen, 10% max mana, Brilliance Aura) including Arcane Missile Clearcast adjustment, meaning every cast of Arcane Missiles has basically a 50% chance of proccing Clearcast.

While TBC/Wrath Arcane was all about vomiting out your Mana as fast as possible with Arcane Blast stacks, here it's the opposite, where you can be extremely mana efficient. Say you have terrible gear and the raid is casual and takes a while to kill bosses; You can downrank Arcane Missiles to fish for cheap Clearcast procs, and then pop Arcane Power + Max rank Arcane Missiles to balance the DPS loss from downranking. And if you are lucky with procs, you can chunk 3 max rank Arcane Power Arcane Missiles for free.

It's a more sophisticated spec that requires you to think more about how you play. That's also unfortunately its downfall, as many players fail to realize this, hardcast max-rank Missiles on a mob with 10% hp and then complain about having no mana and doing no damage. And then they swap back to Frost to spam Frostbolts to see big crit numbers from Ice Shards.

[Avalok]

As an arcane mage I also use Frost and Fire spells, mainly "Scorch, Fireblast, Frostbolt" to sustain my mana, and not just spam arcane missiles. I do get hit and take damage from mobs when channelling arcane missiles, but the slow from ice armor helps when I finish-off a mob with a scorch and fireblast. I enjoy this micromanagement of the spells I use as an arcane mage to efficiently sustain my mana and deal plenty of damage in a quick amount of time, and I can kill 4-5 mobs at a time before having to drink or evocate.

Also, arcane missiles get a total of 9% solid crit-chance from talents, so by the time I'm level 38, my arcane missiles got to have a solid crit-chance of 20%! Just imagine the crit-chance of arcane missiles at level 60 and I do end-game content and get geared. it might probably get to a solid amount of 28% if you have the right gear, and from just blue gear and not having to be level 60 epics. There's also that 50% crit-damage increase and 10% arcane hit rating from talents, so spamming arcane missiles is killer!

[Templar85]

I posted a rework in the suggestion section viewtopic.php?t=10630 What do you think about it?

[Kefke]

You know...looking at the talents Arcane gets, there's the ability to auto better with wands, the ability to do lots of damage, gaining more armor and shielding, and keeping up a consistent uptime. So they can keep constantly generating threat, and get more survivability. Wouldn't it be crazy if it was meant to be some kind of weird alternative tank spec? More likely it was meant as an all-rounder, with the idea that there would be room for players to not focus hard on one role, but I find the idea of a mage tank very funny for some reason.

[Imonobor]

Mage tanks are a thing, but they are very niche, very hard to play and nearly extinct.
They "tank" by kiting things around basically. So anything immune to slow and frost nova is where their viability ends. Even with the "tankiness" talents from arcane, they can get one or two shot by trash in dungeons, mana shield is also a poor substitute for ice barrier. Overall, not great.

The problem I had with arcane when I tried it was the lack of a solid single target spell, like arcane blast. Arcane missiles feel too clunky to use, especially in dungeons when the mobs die halfway through your second cast of Arcane missiles, wasting that mana efficiency and doing shit damage compared to the other specs. The utility is nice, but not enough to make up for it. Maybe if we got more tricks up our arcane sleeves like invisibility and spellsteal it would, but as it stands I found arcane underwhelming, and just not fun to play, unlike in TBC. So I went back to spamming frostbolts.

[Nett]

I think Arcane could be a buff/debuff version of mages, where they have talents to debuff enemies and buffs to improve the party status, but this is just my opinion.

TBH TBC's approach with arcane blast was best option they could have, I think Turtle could make arcane blast to mages but instead of cast speed, mana regen buff, to support arcane talents and make them more useful, I do not feel Brilliance aura has real impact since it depends of mage's spirit with is not something so needed for a mage or even possible to stack enough to make a real impact.

I think arcane could have more utility, things like poly, PoM, Arcane Brilliance, and talents who made them stronger, but I do not know if it will break the game, since frost and fire being able to get there can make them stronger instead of creating a meta for arcane focused mages.

[Gladeshadow]

The subject is a good question. I like to think of arcane as a utility tree and mana management tree. It doesn't necessarily accomplish this much outside of arcane missiles and clearcasting, but it's an attempt.

On thing I think the arcane tree suffers with in being a utility tree is that when speccing into mostly arcane, the core spell of arcane missiles requires a base of 32 talent points to be invested into the tree to be most effective. This is because the talents Arcane Instability and Arcane Potency, which are both necessary for maximizing arcane missile damage, are behind to different branches of the tree. This could be solved by making Arcane Mind a 3/3 talent rather than 5/5. This would help to make arcane like the other two trees where the base spells like frostbolt and fireball/scorch don't need >30 points to be maximized; the talents locked behind 30 points in the fire and frost branches are both supporting talents. If arcane was similar, 30/21 arcane trees would be viable. This would be a nice starting place since the elemental builds often don't even require a full 30 talent points to maximize damage of the core skills, which ironically makes such builds more flexible and utility capable than the arcane tree which is supposed to be those things.

I realize this is a lot of suggestion and could be posted in that section of the forum, but it's relevant here too.

[Akos1896]

Please note that I never played mages, only seen people play mages.
I'd love if the core concept of the builds were something like this:
Fire: pure DPS, built in resistance-lowering mechanics so that they actually work in places like MC.
Ice: added defense and space-based utility. Freezing up enemies, slowing them down, kiting. Less damage than fire but could help a group more.
Arcane: I'd make it even more of a utility class. Adding other kinds of buffs which they could distribute, maybe helping party mana regen. Less damage than frost.

In my (inexperienced) view it would look like this.
Damage:
Fire>Frost>Arcane
Utility
Arcane>Frost>Fire