#0 - Aug. 13, 2009, 2:02 a.m.
Let me make it clear that mages are a nuke class, that is the vision even Blizzard has set out for us (see: mage Q&A). I know that a number of mages, including myself, are unhappy with the multi-living bomb change for the sole reason that it shifts the mage playstyle closer to that of a warlock or shadow priest. I don’t think Blizzard is so uncreative that they can’t solve a problem like this without introducing DoT’s.
There are two things I'd consider when making changes to arcane:
We obviously can’t just throw out critical damage modifiers because that’s significantly more prone to actually causing pvp problems than arcane barrage. Creating more ramp up time through arcane blast stacks is also an awful idea. We don’t want to dumb the rotation down even more by having us stack up more blasts before we ever get to use a missile barrage.
I would introduce something like the following:
"Critical Thinking" - Your critical strikes with arcane blast increase the damage from your arcane blast buff by an additional 3% (number is flexible). Can not exceed 9% additional damage.
So if all three of your arcane blasts crit, you would gain 63% damage on your next arcane spell rather than 54%. We have the same ramp up time that already exists, with an added feature. I don't think this would be a big deal in terms of burst damage, especially considering that there aren't enough arcane mages who utilize arcane blast as it is (see: 51/0/20 arcane/shatter gimmicks).
Another possibility could be a slightly modified version of an old wotlk beta warlock talent named "Kindling Soul" - Your critical strikes with arcane spells increase the damage done by your next arcane spell by Y% of your spirit. This would add some burst, but if we're scaling off spirit it would be much more potent in pve than pvp. And if we’re really set on not adding burst, you could make it based off the third arcane blast rather than critical strikes.
Something that also gets brought up is the possibility of the missile barrage proc rate scaling in some fashion of spirit or crit. This is an okay idea as well, but I have two concerns with it. The first being that making missile barrage more prominent than it is probably isn't a good idea if we're ever going to get arcane barrage back into the rotation. The second being that this kind of scaling would be diminished by the fact that we stack three arcane blasts already, three chances for us to get a missile barrage proc before we're ready to use it.
I have already made it clear I don't agree with Ghostcrawler at all the kind of potential burst damage arcane is capable of putting out with arcane barrage. But if "arcane barrage + pom -> something 2 shotting" is such a huge problem for them, just get rid of PoM already and give us a more pve-friendly talent. Yeah it can be useful to instant sheep something in pvp, but it's pretty terrible in pve and if it's such a problem for balancing the spec we'd just be better off without it.
At any rate, I'm not trying to give blizzard any one definitive idea. My point is we don't need to give arcane a damage over time effect, there are other ways to approach this issue. If blizzard is so uncreative that they can't balance this game without homogenizing everything, then I'll just quit. I'm not really interested in playing a game like that.
Luph <3
