Empowered Fire

Fire At Heart, Arcane At Mind

You know, I used to scoff at the idea that Lhivera, a well-known mage theorycrafter, used to present – “talent specs are not tools used to optimize your character for a particular kind of performance.” Even to me, as a fairly enthusiastic roleplayer AND raider, it seemed a pretty naive view that your character shouldn’t swap specs in order to gain an advantage in raiding. Maybe I had this view because I’d never had to move out of being a fire mage for my entire career.

But looking at myself, I wonder if I played right into what he was speaking about – even when frost was pretty much the only spec a mage could play in such fire-immune dungeon as Onyxia (1.0) and Molten Core, I stuck with fire. It is something I felt comfortable with and a playstyle I really enjoyed, even at my meager beginnings four years ago.

All of this weighs heavily on my mind as I made my first really serious foray into the world of arcane raid speccing last week with the advent of 3.2.2. I’m pretty sure many of our hard-won fire mages are feeling the sting of swapping to arcane, but once again, Blizzard has decided to tip the scales slightly and make arcane for all intents and purposes one of the best specs for high-end competitive PVE play.

Sure, I tried arcane for the 2 or 3 weeks back in Tier 5 content (specifically A’lar) when the Mystical Skyfire Diamond had been unchanged pre-2.3, but I wasn’t really feeling it. After the changes to the arcane rotation and mana useage, I’ve clocked some real raiding hours playing with my new spec and generally feeling unsure about how much I want to like arcane.

Is it remorse? Is it genuine admiration for the spec now? It’s strange and certainly in the minority to feel twangs of new appreciation for your class after something as “minor” as a talent spec change but maybe this is what Lhivera was really getting at all along. The specs we choose reflect us innately as players and the sorts of things we enjoy.

But I can’t say I am -not- enjoying some of the things the arcane playstyle brings in contrast to fire. While I love the gigantic crits, intense fireworks and DoTs of fire-spec, there’s something to be said about having my DPS buff continue across multiple targets, very little windup on pulls and having situational tools to increase my DPS versus my DPM. I know that according to fairly veteran arcane mage Euripedes of Critical QQ has some things to say about how the arcane playstyle has been made a lot worse on things like movement and rotation, but the spec and rotation as a whole still has a lot of configurability.

While I’m still continuing to grasp the real fundamentals of how arcane works in raids (my cooldown useage is still rather sloppy) – I’m terribly fond of how my DPS has increased just due to the mechanics of our raids, as well as the varied playstyle. I was allowed to go arcane quite fortuitously because of our caster lead (a warlock) decided that he swap to Demonology for the Shadow Mastery buff, allowing both myself and our other mage to try out arcane. So far, all three of us have been having fun doing something new for once. Being a scorch-bringer no longer has also been quite enjoyable, and the buff that demo locks bring with Demonic Pact is a huge raid-wide DPS increase.

Are there downsides to change? Of course. I miss Living Bomb and its dazzling EXPLOSION effects. I miss crits. I hate that one of my better arcane trinkets is from normal Trial of the Champion and hasn’t dropped yet. (HATE) I dislike how movement is quite the largest downside of the spec since so many fights in Trial of the Crusader require it.

Blizzard may never make a drastic change again with arcane or fire, but I doubt it. Will I be arcane forever? Probably not. Fire and arcane are still pretty dead even in most considerations. I’m just always seeking to further my DPS and my play within the confines of my raid and if something becomes a clear choice in damage, then that’s what I have to do. It is fun certainly that Blizzard has still given mages a lot to work with in choosing what they want to do or what kind of mage they want to be. Deep down, I’m always going to be a fire mage no matter what.

I’m never speccing frost however, and that’s final. Screw frost.

Tags: arcane-mages, fire-mage, fire-mages, Lhivera, patch-3.2.2, switching-fire-to-arcane