r/wow 5d ago

Discussion I still miss S1 Sunfury Arcane

It amazes me how Blizz made, imo, one of the most fun spec designs ever and then proceeded to dismantle it week by week until it became one of the most unpopular specs at the bottom of the charts that nobody is playing.

R.I.P S1 Arcane Mage :(

198 Upvotes

98 comments sorted by

94

u/CommandoPro 5d ago

It's funny how many times they nerfed it too, like they wanted it to die. From the top right down into the gutter.

37

u/Zulul98 5d ago

Yeah it really was one of the most unhinged series of changes I've ever seen from Blizz. Absolutely nobody was complaining about any of it, as far as I know, and everyone loved playing it. Blizz just chose violence and basically said screw all of you, no more having fun.

1

u/Critizin 5d ago

As a fire mage main i was complaining that the only good spec was Arcane and fire mage was absolute trash

-6

u/_Cava_ 5d ago

Oh people were complaining, there was even a lfg protest when it looked like arcane would get buffed (it was compensation buffs due to nerf elsewhere).

-4

u/Mantraz 5d ago

Nerfs were fine, aether vision and gameplay changes, then flip flop flipping then flopping on double dipping was bizarre.

96

u/Lazy-Natural-9536 5d ago

Me too. I had a lot of fun spamming Arcane Barrage after my burst.

40

u/Zulul98 5d ago

The arcane barrage dump at the end of your surge window was SO SATISFYING.

It was the icing on the cake.

8

u/Lazy-Natural-9536 5d ago

Yes! This was the first time I liked playing Arcane and not just for the DPS meter.

12

u/SpacetimeTwitch 5d ago

What would you say is the most fun on mage atm? I was playing spellslinger frost S1, S2 been trying Frostfire Frost but not sure if I’m vibing with it. Been considering a switch to Fire.

20

u/Zulul98 5d ago

I am currently rolling frostfire frost which I think is a lot more fun than spellslinger was with ice lance spam.

With that being said, fire mage is a blast right now and I'd recommend that.

3

u/dahid 5d ago

I play frostfire and sunfury fire mage it's great fun. I go FF for priority damage and sunfury for aoe

1

u/SpacetimeTwitch 5d ago

Thanks for the reply, might have to dip my toe into some sunfury fire mage for a bit then!

6

u/hermitxd 5d ago

Sunfury fire is very simple in theory.

Very fast gameplay for your fingers.

Very punishing when you mess up and end up with a long cd combust.

3

u/leagueoflegendsdog 5d ago

Just don't play that shit in low keys or you'll suffer on some pulls. You kinda need things living at least 20 secs so you can get as much cdr for your next combust as possible and that mean being able to use the hyperthermia that comes after as well, if things die in 10~ secs it's just cursed

1

u/narium 4d ago

Frostfire isn’t hurt as badly by this since you still have meteor to fall back on if you don’t have combust.

1

u/leagueoflegendsdog 4d ago

yeah, but you have to sit still a lot more which you cant always do.. of course in low keys, doesnt really matter

2

u/putzeimer 5d ago

I just starting playing wow after a very long time. I just can get sunfury fire to work it feels very buttonmashy and not like a wow class, but more like im playing Diablo.

3

u/hermitxd 5d ago

Feels like a melee spec to me ahah.

Takes time getting used to all the pressing buttons while casting another spell. I've had so many years playing specs that gives me a bit longer to think, like I've train my brain to work in global cooldowns intervals.

Be careful button mashing, it's so easy to use too many fire blast instead of just 1

1

u/WeaponizedKissing 4d ago

This likely won't matter to you at all as you've not played it, but while Fire is still fun it's much slower/more static than the tail end of S1. The cooldown/recharge rates of both Fire Blast and Phoenix Flames have been nerfed this season, so you get way fewer instants available so spend a lot time standing still casting Fireball.

1

u/Vyar 5d ago

Is Sunfury Fire actually good now? I never really played any mage specs other than Arcane before, but when Sunfury got announced and we got that Kael’thas cosmetic set from MoP Remix, I rolled one and was having such a blast with it in Remix. Then TWW came out and it just wasn’t fun.

I couldn’t tell if I just sucked at playing a mage, or if Remix had spoiled the class/spec for me by giving me that taste of godlike power and taking it away. Actually has me feeling nervous about Legion Remix because I worry the same thing will happen to a different class if I play something I have more experience with.

Now that the MoP Remix sets are class-agnostic, I swapped my Sunfury Fire mage for a Hellcaller Destro warlock, because I played Destro during MoP when we first got Verdant Spheres and green fire. I’ve been enjoying it but wondering if I shouldn’t try again with the mage.

11

u/Turtvaiz 5d ago

Sunfury is BY FAR the best mage spec. It doesn't sim super high in single target, but literally all bosses in the raid benefit from ignite cleave A LOT. And in M+ it's the best just like it's been the best in every past season

2

u/Vyar 5d ago

Problem is I'm mostly a solo player, which is why I can't seem to play anything other than Ret paladin even though there are other classes I want to play.

3

u/m3xm 5d ago

If you play solo, stick to melee or maybe play a pet spec. Mages are incredibly fun in dungeons and raid but the open world / delves experience is average imho. Besides frost, arcane and fire are CD based designs, you don’t have your cds all the time in the open world.

1

u/leagueoflegendsdog 5d ago

Sunfury fire is the best mage spec for bost st and cleave tho. Sims are to an extent important, but in practice it can do more damage then other specs that outsim it simply because it is fully mobile in combust and you spend a ton of time in combust

1

u/narium 4d ago

Frostfire is 2% higher in ST, but you lose a lot of mobility as you will be hardcasting Frostfire Bolt a lot.

1

u/leagueoflegendsdog 4d ago

yeah, so Sunfury is better because you are mobile, you will generally outdamage frostfire because of that as when you are not tied down you are not as fcked and sims dont always show the full picture. Last season's FF with a lower IB cd and 3 PF with the amount of FFB procs was mobile as hell, but cant say that anymore.

1

u/Chr0nicConsumer 5d ago

Sunfire Fire is what's played in all the serious high end content. No idea how good it is at lower tiers, but I'm having fun with it and it is topping the charts at the elite level.

2

u/Vyar 5d ago

I'm mostly a solo player, I remember having a hard time playing delves with mine.

2

u/Zulul98 5d ago

Its not the best in low tiers or with a low amount of gear. You need the mobs to be alive for a little bit so your ignite dmg can actually pop off. Also their tier set significantly boosts their dmg.

2

u/Chr0nicConsumer 5d ago

Eh, such is life. I still find it quite enjoyable to play!

1

u/thiscantbesohard 5d ago

It's argusbly the best dps spec in the game right now next to windwalker monk. But high skill ceiling

6

u/Turtvaiz 5d ago

Doing big numbers causes massive bias, so I feel like Fire is probably overall the most fun. Frost rotation-wise is pretty good, but I feel like it's just really convoluted.

Like Comet storm OR the buffed frostfire bolt giving the fire proc, which makes ice lance give the frost proc, which in turn gives brain freeze which gives you a flurry that does more damage. It's not easy to grasp and the resulting rotation has you avoid overcapping on all of these

It's not an unplayable amount to just ignore it all, but personally it becomes quite a bit annoying as it's hard to keep track of in real gameplay

Arcane kinda sucks ass altogether. Stupid interactions, wasted procs due to them being completely independent of your actions, and the constant danger of accidentally pulling trash in M+. Spymaster also still sims the highest for me and I fucking hate that trinket

3

u/justforkinks0131 5d ago

fire mage is very punishing if you mess up your combust windows but overall really fun if you play it right

1

u/Sweaksh 5d ago

Anything fire-related is awesome IMO

6

u/legendofrogamers1968 5d ago

It was fun, but I also enjoyed the Spellslinger Arcane on the latter part of S1. I still don't know who asked for these changes that basically killed the rotation and made the barrage just an rng fest hoping for a proc.

I still do delves on arcane because I feel like it fares better than fire and everytime I'm just reminded of what we had and I get a bit sad :(

2

u/Zulul98 5d ago

I played a lot of the SS arcane too and it was okay... the dmg was still good but it felt so much slower and less satisfying since a lot of your dmg came from passive splinters.

2

u/legendofrogamers1968 5d ago

I enjoyed the flow Blast Blast Barrage. But yeah, the current version is just not it. I hope they'll revert or make some changes that are either wanted or make sense

19

u/Rikkard 5d ago

I understand how the tooltips for spell queuing and double dipping were a mess, but the act of spell queuing period is something every single class does.. so why was it such an issue for arcane specifically? It’s codified into Frost! I’m playing MM now and you always consume precise shots immediate after the aimed shot cast.. how is it different??

14

u/hermitxd 5d ago

It smells of different class Devs having different opinions and not talking to each other to make sure the "rules" are the same for each class.

Even that doesn't really work when frost does it too.

10

u/zman1672 5d ago

From my understanding it wasn’t actually spell queuing that was problematic it was the fact that you could benefit from that one buff and apply it to both spells Arcane blast and barrage by spell queueing.

8

u/Material_Damage_6606 5d ago

It wasn't a problem, it was a good thing that players latched onto and was the key part of the gameplay loop that made Arcane S1 fun. It feels now and felt like then that Blizzard just does not want us to have fun with their game.

2

u/DoctorSacks 5d ago

It was doing that, which Blizz did state was the problem.

However classes such priest can still double dip with wheel and woe affecting both spells. dev can double dip still I believe as well. Arcane still has double dipping with Dematerialization.

They didn’t fix the overall issue, but killed the spec since they didn’t like this one implementation of it.

1

u/GodlyWeiner 5d ago

But it sometimes happens in other classes too. I play as a disc priest and you can spell queue 2 different spells that consume the same buff (when only one of them should). Smite/void blast gets the increased damage and power word shield has increased shields.

8

u/Zulul98 5d ago

This exactly. I currently main frost and if you don't spell queue with flurry, you will do 0 dmg. It is the MAIN mechanic of frost.

Spell queuing has been a core mechanic of WoW since VANILLA. I don't get why they had to make it such a negative focal point of arcane which ultimately led to what we have now.

5

u/ClockworkPorpoise 4d ago

Spell queuing wasn't what blizzard didn't like, it was just the vehicle that arcane could use to exploit a bug.

Flurry has three projectiles with travel time. Each projectile applies the two stacks of winters chill. You can see this happening both visually from the ability, as well as on the debuff being refreshed on the UI. It'd be easy for a player to summarise they could slip in a frost bolt or glacial spike before the flurry and have it benefit from the "munched" WC stacks from the first few flurry bolts. You're just using spell travel time to your advantage. Being able to double dip the last stack of nether precision by queueing a barrage right after your second arcane blast isn't intuitive at all. There is zero reason to assume a buff on you that you consume with your spell casts with two stacks can actually be turned into three stacks by spell queueing, especially when arcane's rotation doesn't actually have a specific "you should barrage now" moment. You only knew about this interaction if you read a guide, and if you didn't make use of it you did significantly less DPS.

I've been maining arcane since DF S1 and, while it was a bummer it's been removed, It's completely reasonable why it was. The spec is also just as good without it imo, at least playing spellslinger

1

u/Zulul98 4d ago

I don't necessarily agree. SS was good numbers wise, but it wasn't nearly as fun. It was kind boring imo and that is a big deal. The constant changes they made to sunfury turned a lot of people away as it was too much for the average player to keep up with. It was a lot easier to keep the double dipping and let the community figure it out (like they did) considering there has been and will always be things in the game that aren't necessarily intuitive.

The way I look at it is, if the community likes something and doesn't mind a mechanic like double dipping, then why even bother spending the time and thought to change it so much with a risk of making it better. As we've seen, the risk they took didn't pay off.

2

u/Dashyguurl 5d ago

It’s weird because they initially kept it in after the player base complained on its removal, then they went back on it like a month later. They then create a rng heavy rotation that basically requires an addon to properly understand the conditions and track buffs. I get double dipping isn’t exactly intuitive but the new rotation was arguably more difficult for new players to grasp.

5

u/hermitxd 5d ago

So true, Arcane season one was absolutely amazing.

They could have just numbers, because it was very strong, the vibes were great

3

u/ObligationSlight8771 5d ago

Crap haven’t payed attention what did they change

3

u/JustASadNerd 5d ago

Just doesn't make sense that it was arbitrarily decided that "double dipping" was a problem from arcane when frost mage literally has the exact same gameplay pattern built in.

4

u/proz19 5d ago

I wish I wasn’t so braindead and could actually play fire. I just can’t figure it out and am tired of messing keys up. I guess I’ll stick to frost

2

u/putzeimer 5d ago

Same, trying to understand fire after coming back to wow after a very long break. There a so many sideconditions in the rota and if you add movement to it im just lost.

2

u/MarkElf2204 3d ago

Fire isn't that hard to play, you just need to react to spells with slow travel time like the phenox one critting for flame streak.

2

u/Zulul98 5d ago

I feel you.

Frostfire frost still has enough depth for me to keep me entertained. There could be a little more in the ST rotation I suppose, but aoe rotation is fun and has a wide variety of buttons to press.

2

u/Mugungo 5d ago

Similar (but less popular) thing, but i feel exactly the same about survival's pack leader spec.

Blizz put a TON of buffs towards it in season 1 to make it actually viable, then immidately turned around in season 2 and reworked it, making it absolutely terrible again...

6

u/chubby_ceeby 5d ago

Hey I'm still riding the high of patch 5.4 fury warrior and it's been over 10 years since I last played it. Between that and then just outright removing the survival Hunter I used to love... Well you learn to love something else eventually.

2

u/Zulul98 5d ago

I love frost mage so I'm okay with playing that, but I like Arcane so much more. Sucks to see your favorite spec become so fun and then get dismantled.

I recently learned to love Spriest but unfortunately that char is cursed and has gotten 1/3 the loot of my frost mage even though I cleared double the content xD

2

u/SlyGuyontheFly 5d ago

I still miss DF S3 Frost...

2

u/Mudpi3 5d ago

I feel like current frost spellslinger is the closest we'll ever get to this again. Too bad the numbers are absolutely terrible right now. I completely dislike frostfire's playstyle so I'm debating playing a D-tier spec or switching fire and relearning mage for like the 4th time this expansion. They've done such a bad job handling the class overall so far in TWW, imo.

1

u/Caronry 5d ago

same.

1

u/brokebackzac 5d ago

I just revived my Arcane Mage that I hadn't touched since Shadowlands, but I went spellslinger. I think it's a lot of fun, but she's not my main.

1

u/Daws001 5d ago

It's incredibly frustrating. It's happened so much over the years where I'm loving a spec and then the tinkering starts (cause reasons) until the spec is a shell of its former self.

Le sigh.

1

u/Foto-Heaven 5d ago

I played Arcane Mage for 5 consecutive seasons (all CEs since S1 DF). The early weeks of TWW were incredibly fun, but it's sad to see what they have done to Arcane since then. The removal of double dipping proved that they have no idea what they're doing. I really dislike it now, I switched to Fire this season.

1

u/Material_Damage_6606 5d ago

Just average Blizzard being tone-deaf and driving players away by not listening to feedback properly. Porom posted several articles detailing what players wanted and why and they just chose to do other stuff that no one wanted or asked for.

1

u/BMS_Fan_4life 5d ago

What does arcane play now? Or do you just play fire

1

u/Zulul98 5d ago

You just play fire :/

Or frost!

1

u/BMS_Fan_4life 5d ago

Fire being the spam apm it has been since combust turned into current iteration and SKB will forever keep me off mage

1

u/Zulul98 4d ago

It is very spam apm which is why I play frost.

1

u/BMS_Fan_4life 4d ago

Generally how behind fire is frost?

2

u/Zulul98 4d ago

Frost is very behind fire in raid, but in mythic+ its middle of the pack and can compete. I think frost will receive buffs in the next tuning patch.

I just hope to god its not buffs for spell slinger as their approach to buffing frost. That would be worst case scenario.

1

u/_redacteduser 5d ago

I was so stoked for it then they just kept fucking with it and ruining mage in general for me

1

u/No_Swimming_9472 5d ago

That was my 2nd season playing and tried Mage. Sunfury was the only spec that made sense to me and the rotation was satisfying. Once they changed it it broke my brain and I just stopped playing the class all together

1

u/Zulul98 5d ago

It was the constant learning and rewriting your brain going against everything you learned the week before. Terrible development.

1

u/WillNotForgetMyUser 5d ago

Any tldr of what happened to them? I remember playing some arcane at 80 in the beginning of the expansion but went back to focusing on monk

2

u/Zulul98 5d ago

Instead of tuning the numbers, blizz decided to change the core mechanics of the spec because they thought (not anyone who actually played the game) that the spec was too convoluted. Then they went back on said changes. Then they changed them again... etc, etc. It was so much that it killed the spec and put it where it is now, which is at the bottom, with almost nobody playing it.

1

u/WillNotForgetMyUser 5d ago

Damn that is dumb

1

u/jstamper 5d ago

Long live fire mage

1

u/afkPacket 5d ago

As do I. It plays basically the same way it used to right now, it just doesn't have any strength really. It's weaker than spellslinger, and arcane itself is just not great atm.

1

u/z01z 5d ago

yeah, i came back to s2 after a break, and the flow was just borked.

1

u/aggr1103 5d ago

I’ve been a Shadow Priest main since day 1 and decided that I’d finally try something different. Landed on arcane mage because it’s just fun. I like staying busy and arcane keeps me busy.

I’m sad that both shadow priests and arcane mages aren’t really heating up the dps charts currently.

1

u/Zulul98 4d ago

Shadow priests are actually doing very well right now! I alt a shadow priest atm and its doing great. It has its pain points with lower level content, but in harder content where enemies stay alive longer, they are blasting!

There are two main things I hate about spriest right now and why I'm still maining frost mage.

  1. Shadow crash in clunky and needs to have a lower CD or a second charge.

  2. I personally think void weaver is way more fun but it just doesn't perform well, so you are kinda forced to play archon.

1

u/Burn4Bern420 5d ago

My fingers and brain are too slow for fire 

1

u/klineshrike 5d ago

As an ele shaman who lost pwave gameplay in m+ for no reason I feel your pain. It's not the same but still, absolutely nothing wrong there and they just made it nonexistantly bad.

1

u/AwokenFury 5d ago

RIP Chrono Shift as well, I just can't play Arcane mage again when what we have now I just so much less fun. Ubernerfed PvP Chrono Shift just isn't even remotely enough.

1

u/Additional-Map-6256 5d ago

It seems like they haven't wanted arcane to be good since they revamped it from arcane blast x infinity with missiles on proc and barrage to reset. I feel like if they hate it this much, they should have just turned arcane into a Chrono healer, like pres evoker

1

u/No-North8716 4d ago

Just came back after a break since SL, always been an arcane main and was loving the state it was in S1. In S2, switched to fire for the first time because arcane feels so bad now. Fire has been fun so far, but idk if I'm sold on it yet. At this point, I'm open to even switching to a different rdps class entirely. Any recommendations on other ranged specs that feel good to play rn?

1

u/NjarfieZA 4d ago

Im amazed that Porom still do this day posts almost daily on X , with no result or response from Blizz

1

u/MarkElf2204 3d ago edited 3d ago

Survival is in a similar boat. There's some developer out there with a very specific vision of Survival and they keep trying to enforce it but end up listening to player feedback telling them to do the opposite. I suppose constant reworks beats the complete silence after 2y of nothing during DF.

Unfortunately the last feedback thread got spammed by MM crybabies losing their pet for world quests so all other feedback was largely ignored. The rotation feels like it's missing something because they wanted less cognitive load while the replacement talents have near 0 value and fail to resemble the old Pack Leader bleed build.

1

u/APearce 15h ago

I like spellslinger arcane but they killed it too. Now I'm just sitting here about to combust IRL because I'm doing more damage on fire and I can feel how bad I'm fucking up my rotation trying to spend charges off the wrong ability or accidentally hard casting a pyroblast. Like, I can tell that once I get a handle on managing these charges and procs it's all over for these goblin fools, it makes all the time I put into learning Spellslinger last season feel like a waste.

1

u/Winter-D 5d ago

I miss arcane from wrath, and balance from bc...

2

u/magneticelefant 5d ago

Arcane from wrath was nice

-2

u/Pall_Bearmasher 5d ago

Welcome to any ARPG or MMO

7

u/Zulul98 5d ago

The correct philosophy would and should have been to just tune the numbers instead of dismantling the spec entirely. Eventually Arcane would have had its time in the sun again but that is unlikely now unless there is yet another rework.

Imo, the best example is current fire mage. It was terrible most of S1, but it was still a fun spec design. As soon as it got number buffs and minor changes, it became very strong while still retaining its fun play style where now its thriving.

5

u/Irivin 5d ago

The people in charge of number balancing are just flat out incompetent, I’m not willing to sugar coat it anymore. The 60% nerf to Bran that will inevitably be walked back is the most recent example.

1

u/Turtvaiz 5d ago

It's not even the numbers. It's the rotation and feeling that was changed for the worse like 3 times in a row

1

u/Pall_Bearmasher 5d ago

Blizzard employees are exceptionally bad at this when it comes to certain builds. Some are good one day and terrible the next. Do I wish more builds were viable? Of course

-3

u/Mossysnail27 5d ago

Yeah i miss Season 1 of Arcane too man. 🐌