Introduction
My name is Tamir, also known as tam1h.
I've been pushing high mythic+ keys since Legion as a mage and raiding since Warlords of Draenor. I have been raiding in the top 30 scene throughout most of Shadowlands and Dragonflight.
What has changed
Arcane Mage Patch 11.1 Changes
Arcane mages were not happy with what Arcane as a spec turned into; Aethervision was a pretty hated talent among the arcane mages community, it failed to achieve what they were hoping it would, so we are happy this talent goes away.
They realized that Intuition was a core part of the Arcane gameplay ,so it’s a good thing they made it a talent choice. The proc is now way shorter. Essentially, what they are trying to achieve is they want you to use this proc quickly and not think about lining it up with other buffs.
Ultimately, they are trying to make arcane less complicated with the amount of buffs and conditions you have to line up before you press arcane barrage. Which is how it should be, since they said they want to make arcane simpler to play, but previously it turned out to be more complicated, so we’ll see how patch 11.1 turns out for Arcane.
This is the list of Arcane Mage changes:
- Enlightened has been updated - Arcane damage dealt is increased based on your current mana up to 6% at full mana. Mana regen is increased based on your current mana, up to 20% when out of mana.
- Sunfury: Burden of Power is once again benefits from Arcane Barrage
- New Talent: Aether Fragment – Aethervision’s damage bonus is increased to 15%. Choice node with Leysight.
- Arcane Barrage damage increased by 10%.
- Nether Precision no longer benefits Arcane Barrage
- New Talent: Arcane Rebound – When Arcane Barrage hits more than 2 targets, it explodes, dealing light Arcane damage to all enemies within 10 yards of the primary target.
- New Talent: Intuition – Casting a damaging spell has a 5% chance to make your next Arcane Barrage deal 20% increased damage and generate 4 Arcane Charges (basically our Tier Set from Season 1 was made into a talent
- Resonance has been updated – Now increases Arcane Barrage damage by 15% per target it hits beyond the first.
- Leydrinker has been updated:
- Now triggers from consuming Clearcasting (was consuming Nether Precision).
- Chance to trigger increased to 40% (was 25%).
- Echo damage increased to 70% (was 60%).
- Arcane Explosion damage increased by 35%.
- High Voltage bad luck protection chance increased to 15% (was 10%).
- Nerub-ar Palace 4-set bonus updated – Now increases Arcane Missiles and Arcane Orb damage by 15%.
- Developers’ notes: With Intuition’s inclusion into the Arcane talent tree, the Season 1 tier bonus needs to be replaced.
- Arcane Soul has been updated – Additionally causes each cast of Arcane Barrage during Arcane Soul to increase Arcane Barrage’s damage by 15%.
- Fixed an issue that caused the Arcane Phoenix to occasionally cast the player’s version of Meteorite.
- Glorious Incandescence change reverted.
The War Within Changes
Going into The War Within, Arcane and Mage in general are getting significant changes, notably with some talents shifting around, some talents being removed and new ones being added.
I'm going to note the most important changes that affect mage:
- One of the main features going into The War Within is that we are getting a new talent tree called Hero talents.
- Arcane’s choice of the 2 new talent trees to play with both have some gameplay defining talents of their own.
- Spellslinger Sunfury (which we’ll talk about more in the talent and gameplay sections).
- Mass barrier is now a 3 minutes CD.
- Time Warp is being removed (no double lust anymore).
- Time Anomaly has been changed to proc more often (can give arcane surge, and Icy Veins and Combustion for the other specs).
- Inspired Intellect - on the same row as Time Anomaly, arcane intellect grants you an additional 3% intellect (however its additive intellect so its much weaker)
- Mastery for Arcane Mage is being improved
- Arcane Barrage has better scaling with Arcane Charges (90% more damage on 4 charges)
- Arcane familiar is baked into Arcane Intellect
- Supernova is on the same choice as Dragon’s Breath
- Ice Nova and Ring of Frost share the same choice node
- Barrier Diffusion - whenever one of your barriers is removed, reduce its cooldown by 4 seconds (works very well with mass barrier)
- Radiant spark is being removed and replaced with Magi’s Spark
- Nether Tempest has been removed
- Siphon storm and evocation are baked into the Evocation talent
- Mana gem has been removed
- Arcane missiles can now only be cast with a clearcasting proc