Currently, Arcane Mage has 2 rotational spells that it does not use,
Arcane Missiles and
Arcane Explosion, and one spell,
Arcane Pulse, that should be used in AOE only by design, but is being used in single target for
Arcane Charge generation. Below we'll explore the topic of why spells aren't being used or used improperly and the problems associated with having only one viable build currently that ostracizes two of our most iconic abilities.
Arcane Missiles VS Arcane Orb
Starting with the elephant in the room -
Arcane Missiles not being used at all in the current build is primarily due to the talent
Orb Mastery which in a very simple way gives
Arcane Orb the ability to generate
Arcane Salvo stacks at a competitive rate with Missiles, the drawback of which is that it now also consumes
Clearcasting procs as our primary spender. This is juxtaposed by the talent
High Voltage which gives Missiles the ability to generate
Arcane Charges at a competitive rate with Orb; ultimately this forms a psuedo choice-node between High Voltage and Orb Mastery since they both consolidate functionality into Missiles or Orbs respectively. It is especially strange, not casting Missiles, since our talent tree forces us to take a bunch of talents to support it. This build is the only viable Arcane build currently and only works for Spellslinger, leaving Sunfury (which lacks any support for
Arcane Orb builds) completely in the dust in all content.
People like using Missiles
This is a very polarizing issue in the community currently, some people love Orbs, some people long for Missiles; myself, I enjoy the shake up, though I was looking forward to an expansion where Missiles was an actual spender (it has been tuned low since Legion). Beyond sentiments, there are functional reason to want High Voltage builds to succeed, first of all,
Aether Attunement cleave logic was reworked in Midnight and cleaving Missiles are a lot more enjoyable and flexible around enemy movement and positioning. On top of this, Missiles are just a very gratifying spell to cast and in conjunction with the
Slipstream talent, provided a bit more mobility than Orb's instant cast. Second, there is also a resource mismatch currently, Arcane generates more
Clearcasting than it can spend currently on
Arcane Orb causing some of these to time out or just be munched while we overcap waiting on Orb charges.
Orb can be unreliable
Third and probably more important than the above points, Orb has a couple of specific short comings that may impact Arcane's ability to perform at peak levels, Orb is a ground-level projectile spell that passes through enemies and does damage as it passes, often times, because it is a ground-level projectile, it can fall through holes (the first and last bosses of the Rookery dungeon had this issue), it can get stuck on doodad objects (consistently an issue for
Blink as well), or simply fail to hit enemies who are elevated (
Eye of the Jailer for example, but this was also a problem on enemies that are very large and have their hitbox raised up as a result like
Anub'arash). These bosses, at those times, were mostly inconvenient and frustrating for these reasons, however, if we encounter anything like that in the upcoming season, it is going to be a viability issue for the spec.
What can be done?
My suggestion is actually simple here, buff
Meteorite 225%; now hear me out! This seems unrelated, however, Meteorites are a significant source of AOE and single target that is tied to
Arcane Missiles casts as Sunfury. This would ultimately balance the hero trees against one another such that
Arcane Orb centric builds would be Spellslinger favored and
Arcane Missiles centric builds would be Sunfury favored. Buffing Missiles directly likely would result in Spellslinger no longer using
Orb Mastery and removing the Orb build entirely, which many people are enjoying. Buffing Missiles is also more complicated, because you would also need to tune other talents in order to buff cleave/AOE properly to compete.
Meteorite, on the other hand, is a single knob that procs from Missiles via the
Pyrocosm talent, works for single target and cleave; it still does not cover the entire gap in AOE, but I don't think that's a huge concern since it has an easier to optimize cleave functionality.
Single target sims support this being an easy way to create parity within the spec between Missiles and Orb builds (ultimately, sunfury and spellslinger builds as well) and even in
5 target sims it goes a long way towards shoring up the gap. There are other paths towards this - reverting
Arcane Soul nerfs, buffing the
Arcane Phoenix's spells, but the key is that something should be done here, players don't want to sacrifice 20-30% damage to play the thing they want to play, and they shouldn't have to.
Arcane Explosion VS Arcane Pulse
Arcane Explosion has had a history of being forgotten and overshadowed since Legion. This isn't without some merit, as in Legion we had bouts of using Explosion in single target, which is definitely not what the devs intended on and it was quickly fixed. However, since that point, Explosion has been tuned low, despite it being probably the most iconic Arcane ability and perhaps one of the most iconic Mage abilities in World of Warcraft. It desperately needs tie-ins with the hero talents at minimum to make it relevant again, but it seems like the developers intend for this, as they have added
Arcane Pulse, which replaces Explosion and has all the hero talent tie-ins it needs to be viable but has some core drawbacks that make it insufferable to play.
Pulse is a problem
Pulse, unlike Explosion, has a cast time, making Arcane feel pinned in place, the cast time being longer than
Arcane Blast and Explosion also increases its likelihood of being interrupted by mechanics. Another oddity of Pulse is that it can be used in single target when you are specced into it; Arcane Blast has a significantly slower cast time when you do not have
Arcane Charges, as a result it is more time efficient to rebuild charges using Pulse which has a fixed cast time. To add insult to injury with Pulse, recently Blizzard implemented what they called a bugfix removing the only interesting part of Pulse which was
Arcane Salvo proccing from
Reverberate, so you had a bit of rng to shake up the build-to-20-then-barrage monotony. Ultimately, we are still working on how this should play out, but this was likely not enough to remove Pulse's viability in single target and served no end other than making the spec less fun to play.
What can be done?
Pulse should be instant, plainly speaking here, we are taking a talent to make a spell worse in function because of tuning numbers, it doesn't feel good. The animation is great and I love having an at-range AOE option, but instead of enjoying it, I'm frustrated by how much I have to cancel it to dodge swirls on the ground. I also think there needs to be better parity between Explosion and Pulse when it comes to hero talent tie-ins and tuning or Explosion will continue to never be used even when not taking Pulse in an AOE situation.
12.0.5 PTR Update
As of March 12th, Blizzard has posted PTR notes for 12.0.5 which is making Pulse the same cast time and cast time mechanics as Blast (reducing cast time for each Arcane Charge. This change seems to miss the point, while it does firmly address the issues that push us towards using Pulse in single target to generate charges quicker, it also exacerbates the worst point in the rotation - 0 Charge casts. I do not know why Blizzard is so deadset on Arcane having moments in its rotation that feel outright bad for players, like 0 Charge Blast has historically been the most complained about quirk of Arcane for decades.
Summary
Unfortunately, I do not have high confidence that Blizzard will do anything about Pulse and Explosion as it seems intentional that they've designed these spells to be this uncomfortable to play with. Explosion, despite it's iconic nature, mobility quality of life, and feedback given, is now all but pruned completely. The only hope here is that Sunfury receives the love it needs to create a healthy balance between hero talent builds and players are not left with no other option than to hit N and respec to avoid issues when Orb inevitably stumbles.
