Tier Set Bonuses for Arcane Mage
For Arcane Mages in Amirdrassil, our tier set bonus revolves around spending Clearcasting procs to keep up a damage buff and occasionally getting to cast a buffed Arcane Missiles with better damage and the ability to hit 4 additional targets. This works pretty much exactly as advertised, the only major piece of information not in the above is that the 4-set buff is 30 seconds long.
Tier Set Bonus Gameplay Changes and Implications for Arcane Mage
The adjustments in gameplay once you are in combat for this set are minimal so far, currently in single-target situations Arcane Mages cancel Arcane Missiles as soon as the global cooldown is up to cast Arcane Blast. Arcane Mage’s won’t do this when that Arcane Missiles is buffed by Arcane Artillery. Additionally, in AOE you’ll save Arcane Artillery for Touch of the Magi when possible and you also will want to use Arcane Explosion to maintain Forethought if it’s about to expire, even if you have Arcane Charges.
While it may appear to be, at a first glance, a set that would bolster talents associated with Arcane Missiles like Concentration, Illuminated Thoughts, and Improved Arcane Missiles. However, this judgment would be a mistake as it is not really strong enough to change anything at all. It’s actually made Concentration worse relatively, which is completely fine by most since Concentration is pretty unfun due to how it doesn’t interact with anything the way Clearcasting does.
A bigger impact will be losing tier 30’s 4-set bonus Mage Arcane 10.1 Class Set 4pc which has been a huge quality of life increase rotationally for Arcane Mages. Going back to blowing all of our mana at the start of fights before casting our cooldowns is going to feel awful after being able to blow everything on pull like a normal specialization. In fact, the new tier 31 set incentivizes it even more, leading to some very degenerate openers which involve spending all of your mana with Arcane Explosion before your prepull Evocation to generate stacks of Forethought and Arcane Battery. This process can take about 40-60 seconds and will probably be worthwhile for guilds looking to minmax every bit of DPS they can during progression.
Strength of Tier Set Bonus for Arcane Mage
The 2-set bonus is very potent in single target situations as you can reliably keep the buff up for significant parts of your rotation (although it does fall off occasionally). At current tuning it’s about a 6.8% gain over no tier. The 4-set is quite a bit weaker at 2.2%, but beyond tuning it feels awful. You have very little agency with when you want to spend the proc if you want to minmax damage from it, this will also add a fairly significant gap between those who’s guild allows them to minmax proc timings with things like prepull getting X stacks versus those who just throw up a 10-second pull timer. I have already tested one fight, Igira where this will undoubtedly come up.
In AOE there are major issues though, we seldom use Clearcasting procs and even when adjusting the rotation to account for buff maintenance and using the 4-set during burst windows, the 2-set is only worth 3.6% and the 4-set is only worth 0.7%. It is laughable how few 4-set procs we get in AOE and the 2-set falls off all the time, again this is while playing around it as much as you could expect.
Arcane Mage Tier Set Feedback
I think the answer here is simple for how to make this set a much more enjoyable experience for Arcane Mages everywhere. The 2-set fix is simple, the buff should have it’s duration buffed to 30 seconds, this should barely impact single target while buffing AOE and making it feel less frustrating to maintain. Cleaving Arcane Missiles is great and we love it, but we want a LOT more of it. Make it proc every other or every third Clearcasting and lower the damage bonus if you must to compensate, this would heavily impact the fun and leveragability of the 4-set in both cleave and AOE situations while also making this one of the most beloved sets in recent history.
The T30 4-set should be a talent replacing Illuminated Thoughts, this would be very nice to not have to be pushed back into doing the opener from 10.0 which so many dislike.
The tier 31 set bonuses are on the cusp of being great, they just need some tuning in the fun department.
