Our Arcane Mage Writer, Porom, breaks down every aspect of this rework including Utility, Defenses, AoE, Talents and more. If you’re wondering whether you should dust off your Arcane Mage in 10.1.5, then look no further as we talk all things Arcane.
- MAGE
Take a look at the developer’s notes in the Mage feedback thread.
- All ability damage increased by 15%.
- Invisibility is now learned by all specializations at level 16.
- Incanter’s Flow now replaces Invisibility in the Class tree.
- Shifting Power has been moved to Incanter’s Flow previous location.
- Rune of Power and Meteor have been removed.
- New Talent: Ice Cold – Ice Block now reduces all damage taken by 70% for 6 seconds but no longer grants Immunity, prevents movement, attacks, or casting spells. Does not incur the Global Cooldown.
Ice Cold is located on Shifting Power’s previous location on the talent tree.
New Talent: Mass Barrier – Cast Prismatic/Blazing/Ice Barrier (based on your specialization) on yourself and 3 nearby allies. 2 minute cooldown.
- Mass Barrier is located as a choice node with Mass Invisibility.
New Talent: Mass Invisibility – You and your allies within 40 yards instantly become invisible for 10 seconds. Taking any action will cancel the effect. Does not affect allies in combat.
- Mass Invisibility located as a choice node with Mass Barrier.
- Developers’ note: The PvP Talent for Arcane will be updated in a future PTR build.
Accumulate Shielding is now a 1 rank talent (was 2). Barrier cooldowns now recharge 30% faster while the shield persists at rank 1.
Accumulate Shielding now connects to the Time Anomaly/Temporal Warp choice node.
Time Manipulation is now a 1 rank talent (was 2). Now reduces the cooldown of your loss of control abilities by 2 seconds at rank 1.
Time Manipulation now connects to the Time Anomaly/Temporal Warp choice node.
Displacement now heals the caster for 20% of their maximum health when returning to the Blink location.
Winter’s Protection now reduces the cooldown of Ice Block by 30 seconds per rank.
Displacement is now located after Flow of Time.
Greater Invisibility now replaces Invisibility when talented and is located below Temporal Velocity.
Mass Barrier is now cast on yourself and 4 allies (was 3).
Fixed an issue with Prismatic Barrier applying to more than 4 allies.
Mass Invisibility duration increased to 12 seconds (was 10 seconds).
Diverted Energy’s barriers now heal you for 20/40% of the damage absorbed (was 10/20%).
Flow of Time reduces the cooldown of Blink by 2/4 seconds (was 1/2 seconds).
Temporal Velocity’s movement speed duration increased to 3 seconds and 5 seconds after using Blink and Alter Time, respectively.
Temporal Velocity’s movement speed after Blinking increased by 10/20% (was 5/10%).
Incantation of Swiftness now increases movement speed by 40/80% for both Invisibility and Greater Invisibility.
Ice Cold can no longer be dispelled.
Fixed an issue that caused Displacement to replace Invisibility and Greater Invisibility.
Arcane
- Arcane Power has been removed.
- Arcane Surge duration has been increased by 3 seconds and now increases spell damage by 35% (was 10%).
- New Talent: Concentrated Power – Clearcasting makes your next Arcane Missiles channel 20% faster or causes your next Arcane Explosion to echo for 40% damage.
- Orb Barrage has been redesigned – Arcane Barrage has a 10% chance per Arcane Charge consumed to launch an Arcane Orb in front of you.
- Clearcasting no longer makes Arcane Missiles channel time faster.
- Arcane Barrage is now learned baseline at level 11.
- Clearcasting is now learned baseline at level 12.
- Reverberate is no longer a choice node with Nether Tempest and is located directly after Arcane Missiles.
- Siphon Storm no longer grants Arcane Charges and now halves Evocation’s channel time.
- Nether Tempest now connects to Chrono Shift and Supernova in the Arcane tree.
- Improved Prismatic Barrier reduces magic damage taken by 10% (was 5%) and reduces harmful Magic effect durations by 15% (was 10%).
- Improved Prismatic Barrier no longer connects to Touch of the Magi.
- Arcing Cleave no longer connects to Touch of the Magi.
AOE Feels Fun Again!
For the first time since Legion ended I feel like my AOE rotation will matter again. First let’s review why!
First and most importantly, Orb Barrage was changed as follows:
- Â Consuming Clearcasting reduces the cooldown of Arcane Orb by 2 sec.
Additionally, casting Arcane Missiles 15 times firesArcane Barrage has a 10% chance per Arcane Charge consumed to launch an Arcane Orb toward your target. Clearcast Arcane Missiles count as 2.in front of you.
This is a returning favorite legendary from Legion, Mantle of the First Kirin Tor. This change speeds up our charge generation and spend a ton in AOE. When this procs, which is very often as the tooltip implies, you will be able to just spend 1 global between Arcane Barrage casts, this can be used to refresh Nether Tempest, an Ice Nova, or just throw in another Arcane Explosion, then back to Arcane Barrage.
Adding to this feedback is the long requested change for Clearcasting to include some benefit for AOE, which now in the form of Concentrated Power which will cause Arcane Explosion to echo after it’s cast for another 40% damage and generate an additional Arcane Charge! Reverberate was moved up the tree and no longer competes against Nether Tempest which now means we can actually take it for even more Arcane Charge generation in AOE!
Combined these changes create an extremely fun playback loop where you don’t have long lulls between Arcane Barrage casts. Currently in 10.0 without these tools you spend your filler with 4 Arcane Explosions and then one Arcane Barrage and it is honestly dull. This does a lot to make things feel more fun, though I wish Arcane Barrage had a bit more of a place in uncapped AOE, the change to Orb Barrage should help quite a lot with this due to Arcane Orb not having a target cap. Even when Orb Barrage doesn’t proc, it isn’t long before you have Arcane Charge built back up, what is on PTR now is very fun.
There is two key drawbacks to all of this; that we now now have more differences between single target and m+ builds, which is a drawback but also one I think we can stand for. The second however is that Radiant Spark interactivity with the Arcane Orb from Orb Barrage and the extra 40% Arcane Explosion from Concentrated Power increment the vulnerability, making the rotation a bit difficult in AOE to perform correctly. This is something theorycrafting will have to push forward on unless changed, hopefully the extra orb and explosion procs can just not increment spark. All in all, these changes have been requested throughout the community and this is generally well received as well, these are amazing changes so far!
Utility and Defensives!
In dungeons you may finally be able to get Chrono Shift again, this also comes with an option to take Supernova or Improved Prismatic Barrier, or a very minor single target dps increase. Improved Prismatic Barrier in particular got a 5% damage reduction buff bringing your prismatic barrier to 25% magic damage reduction which is quite a lot in the sense that it is only a 25 second cooldown defensive. However, in single target the tree is far more restrictive, there is no room for any spec utility at all and more often than not you will have to make decisions you do not want to in raids to determine how much AOE/cleave you need to bring.
As for the class tree, Ice Cold is amazing and exactly what the doctor ordered. An off gcd defensive that can give some health return when talented for it, this replaces Ice Block but in most situations a heavy DR and heal is just as good as an immunity and we can keep ourselves active in combat while it’s up. In the same vein, we got a new Displacement which now heals on use, unfortunately it still requires us to Blink first, so I don’t think it will get too much play for the heal alone. Additionally Mage’s are getting some group utility that is quite strong defensively with Mass Barrier, particularly for Arcane this also gives our Prismatic Barrier damage reduction bonus. This will be a very welcome cooldown to help with incoming damage during dangerous encounters. We also got Mass Invisibility moved from a PvP talent to a competing choice node with Mass Barrier which will be nice if you want to do group skips without a Rogue in the group.
Just as important as these new additions and changes to utility spells is the changes to the class tree itself, Meteor got removed and Shifting Power got moved up the tree, resulting in the only throughput capstone being left is the choice node of Temporal Warp and Time Anomaly which is easily accessible from any angle. This means that the utility throughout the tree is wide open and you simply just grab the easy to get throughput and decide which utility and defensives remain that you want use in the encounter you’re doing! This is a great approach and the additions and changes in this section are welcome and terrific!
Is it All Roses? No.
I have 4 big issues with the changes: first and foremost, they did not address Temporal Warp. This ability has been a curse for 3 of the last 4 expansions, it creates a bad social friction between Mages and their groups. Additionally, Time Anomaly, it’s alternative isn’t remotely tuned well to compete in any situation in PvE and is far too prone to variance from pull to pull making it an unappealing alternative even if it were tuned appropriately to compete. Temporal Warp is by far one of the most contentious parts of playing a Mage in Dragonflight, much like it was briefly in Shadowlands when it was best in 9.0 and for most of Legion. Causing the spell to not go on cooldown was a step in the right direction, but it was ultimately a half-measure that did not go far enough. Please just give it a separate button with no connection to Exhaustion or Time Warp, no one likes this how it is and it is not in the interest of having fun with your friends.
Second, the combination of Greater Invisibility and Invisibility means that we effectively are losing a sprint now when we take Greater Invisibility. This seems to come out of left field as a 5m sprint never felt very strong and was mostly just nice in a few very, very niche situations. I understand there may be the impression of button bloat for Mages at the moment, and that isn’t without merit, I just personally don’t like utility, throughput, and defensives overlapping to the point of never getting any benefit from a specific aspect of a spell. For example, in this case, we will never use Greater Invisibility for move speed when it is as strong of a defensive ability as it is. Invisibility allowed us to get the benefit of Incantation of Swiftness without having to expend our very strong defensive. The same issue now exist with Displacement since if you want the heal, you have to Blink, there is no separation of the two.
There are a slew of talents that serve no real purpose, or are so weak that they are only reluctantly taken in order to get to more appealing talents, in the spec tree: Cascading Power, Concentration, Illuminated Thoughts, and Foresight. Cascading Power, Concentration, and Illuminated Thoughts are all weakly designed around Arcane Missiles and prior to 10.1 buffs to Arcane Blast when Arcane Harmony was in favor they were only taken because we had to take them for Arcane Harmony. A large part of the problem here is that the buffs to Arcane Blast out scaled the buffs to Arcane Missiles and Arcane Barrage, so now Arcane Blast does so much damage relative to the rest of our toolkit that Arcane Missiles isn’t even worth the full channel, we get enough procs to keep Nether Precision most of the time so another 10% proc chance, an additional proc banked, or 2 procs generated when we use Mana Gem just doesn’t really matter for much. And then there’s Foresight which is just an oddity that does not compete with any other mobility or utility and probably should’ve just been pruned.
Lastly is a growing concern among many Mages, myself included, that the Rune of Power removal will result in a smoothening of our burst potential in content. The one thing that attracted me to Mage was the burst profile of Arcane, even when other specs could burst better than us I did not mind, but having our burst reduced to me is antithetical to everything Mage should be. Personally, I could take it or leave it when it comes to Rune of Power, I see how it does not really hold up in modern encounter designs, but my concern is that removing it is also removing part of the profile that originally drew me and many others to Mage to begin with. Those high highs don’t come from 15% aura buffs. I hopen that we get more PTR updates soon with the Fire/Frost changes as well as additional class tree love to address some of the issues remaining. It’s also worth noting that Incanter’s Flow is also pretty historically boring for Arcane having never been worth playing around rotationally and I’m not even sure if that’s a bad thing as it sounds pretty bad to try and time Arcane Surge or Radiant Spark Vulnerability stacks to benefit from the higher Incanter’s Flow stacks.
About the Author
Hello, I’m Porom a Mage player in <Divergence>. I have been playing WoW on and off since release and am an active staff member in the Altered-Time discord. I have played at the top end in the earlier expansions of WoW but now I prefer to keep my raiding time short and efficient. I stream my guild’s raids and some dungeons every now and again over at twitch. You can also find me in the Arcane Dream discord.
