Can Arcane be viable?

[Logiic 0]

With the Artifact Weapon being such a big part of the character and being so important for your overall performance im trying to make sure i make the right choice.

Im a casual PVE'r, i play PVP for the most part, and im having an absolute blast playing Arcane. As someone who wants to go deeper into PVE this expansion, maybe do some heroic raids, i'll want to be playing the specs that do the most damage, and thats where im having trouble with arcane.

i've havent found a way to compete with fire in ST dmg, i dont even know if it can and thats holding me back from investing on one of the artifacts.


Have you been playing Arcane? Have you seen high ilvl Arcane Mages? If so, can it be viable and compete for top spot in PVE or is it just completely inferior in every way possible?

 

 

[Valks 2,375]

I am yet to see anyone in my guild or groups play Arcane. I have only seen Fire so far, but I'm sure you COULD get away with playing it if you really wanted to. 

Perhaps another Mage player could shed some light on situations Arcane could at least be decent in.

[Burrit0 1]

I thinks its to early to tell with only 840-850 gear available atm.  but try checking dps rankings on the top pages . 

wowprogress is far better than noxxic (noxxic has old logs etc) , but there are some others aswell wich i have forgotten.

[XLBananaHamock 0]

Yes it's viable. I currently main an Arcane mage and at 845 I average over 200k in mythic dungeons and I spike well into 400k on single target bosses. The sad truth is you won't be able to pull the numbers fire does, sims show that Arcane averages around 15-20% less than fire. If you like it keep at it, that's my thoughts on it. I personally love it.

[Lily 23]

I played Arcane through hole WoD and was very pleased with it. With the prepatch it really changed a lot. Not only the dmg was "less", but the rotation felt really rough and so I switched to Fire.
 

But the prepatch was already made for Legion and with the artifact I think Arcane should be playable now.

But it isn't competetive to FIre atm, what I have seen (yes I have seen some Arcanemages :D ).


So for now Fire > Arcane, but I think that this will change at some point!

[Valks 2,375]

Looks like the general consensus so far is, if you like it, play it!

[Sycirlin 0]

Given that your question was "is arcane viable?" 

 

The answer is yes. Arcane performs well. It's actually above some other CLASSES. So if you want to play it you can,  you will be playing a viable spec that's doing OK damage. 

 

However fire is doing better, fire is a top tier spec and it's the best spec for mages. 

 

So if you like arcane you can play it, your damage will be viable, but it will be behind the fire spec. 

 

However I tend to believe that due to how the specs tend to scale and the current design of mage specs, arcane will end up beating fire mid-expansion. This is just that a believe, but I'm pretty confident on this idea. 

 

I personally will play fire for now, but I'll also start upgrading my arcane artifact sooner than later. 

Edited September 14, 2016 by Sycirlin

[Rylar 0]

As with nearly any spec/class debate in the game, a good arcane mage will out damage a poor fire mage any time. If you like how the spec works, I suggest keeping at it and mastering it. Blizzard is going to change numbers and such throughout the expansion, as they always do, so master the spec you enjoy playing. 

[Valks 2,375]

10 hours ago, Rylar said:

As with nearly any spec/class debate in the game, a good arcane mage will out damage a poor fire mage any time. If you like how the spec works, I suggest keeping at it and mastering it. Blizzard is going to change numbers and such throughout the expansion, as they always do, so master the spec you enjoy playing. 

This has always been the argument that stands since time eternal. Shadow Priests have been terrible on ST for ages, yet there are SPriests that can top meters in many groups simply due to skill differences.