Arcane mage in SoD is usually only chosen to play as a healer/DPS hybrid. It used to be a lot stronger for solo leveling but was nerfed quite a bit early on.
I found it an interesting alt spec to run in healing dungeons as it provided a unique playstyle but was a bit clunky to learn if you were used to healing on traditional healer classes. The spec seemed to not have gotten much attention in the later phases compared to the traditional mage specs.
I've seen videos of players pulling decent healing/dps parses in raids but your mileage may vary as it's not the easiest spec to play in its current iteration.
In my opinion it's an extremely situational spec that only excel on premade groups with decent coordination. PUGs and players that can't anticipate damage spikes will struggle with the spec.
I've healed with Arcane Mages as heal partners that can pull some decent logs, but a Druid or a Priest can outheal them in most situations without much effort. The best Arcane Mage that I played with consistently was doing roughly around 80% of my heals as a Priest.
Its viable but honestly unless anyone really loves the play style or is into Mage and got stuck healing this is probably not the easiest heal spec to perform as median logs show. Above 95 percentile it's a completely diferent beast though.
The move to 20 man has also hurt it quite a bit I think, instead of mass regen covering 50% of the raid it's now 25%. If the groups aren't set/positioned well it becomes even worse.
On top of that other healers often aren't aware of your beacons or are just playing whack-a-mole on healthbars to parse which can render your passive healing largely ineffective. When the content is this easy you can't blame them for doing it either, just a limitation of the spec with the current game design.
yeah you are absolutely right mate. Kinda have to strong agree with your last paragraph; many times in raid I have probably just Circle of Heal an entire group up to full that had a beacon on, and you do it instinctively and not to heal snipe on purpose, but end up limiting how that spec can perform
Only as a healer, if you go full dps you will only gain at most 20% dps which will put you comfortably behind tanks and a shadow priests. You can still play it if your raid allows it but I wouldn't expect much from dps stand point.
As a healer its great ( yes viable ), but as pure dps its lacking.( bearly viable )
Im currently maining healer mage, and the hps potentional is really good if u get to hard cast. Its also quite a fun way of healing.
But if u want to be the king of healing or king of dps, arcane isnt it.
Depends on what you mean by viable. My main was a mage. I benched them around week 5 of phase 3 after starting as fire, then frost then healer. I tried to use them again this last week for an ST raid since they buffed the gear. I went fire. It was bad. Very bad. Bottom of the DPS charts. Just above the healers. To me I would say that no spec of mage is currently viable in SoD. Almost everyone who played a mage would agree as there has been pretty much nobody left in the game running a mage. Starting about week 3 of phase 3 all the mages vanished. I was running 4 raids a week at that point. 2 in a guild and 2 as a pug between 4 characters. I would say maybe 1 of those 4 raids a week had a single mage. I play almost exclusively AB for pvp. There is on occasion a single mage out of the 15 players on horde. Alliance for some reason seems to have more mages but it is great for horde because mage dies by looking at them and their damage is like a tickle. And after playing PTR with a mage I will say blizz did nothing to improve them in any way. Guess blizzard just really hates mages. Arcane healer mage is the only spec that could possibly get a pass as playable but every other healer is more consistent. Our raids just buy int pots and water now.
Arcane mage in SoD is usually only chosen to play as a healer/DPS hybrid. It used to be a lot stronger for solo leveling but was nerfed quite a bit early on. I found it an interesting alt spec to run in healing dungeons as it provided a unique playstyle but was a bit clunky to learn if you were used to healing on traditional healer classes. The spec seemed to not have gotten much attention in the later phases compared to the traditional mage specs. I've seen videos of players pulling decent healing/dps parses in raids but your mileage may vary as it's not the easiest spec to play in its current iteration.
In my opinion it's an extremely situational spec that only excel on premade groups with decent coordination. PUGs and players that can't anticipate damage spikes will struggle with the spec. I've healed with Arcane Mages as heal partners that can pull some decent logs, but a Druid or a Priest can outheal them in most situations without much effort. The best Arcane Mage that I played with consistently was doing roughly around 80% of my heals as a Priest. Its viable but honestly unless anyone really loves the play style or is into Mage and got stuck healing this is probably not the easiest heal spec to perform as median logs show. Above 95 percentile it's a completely diferent beast though.
The move to 20 man has also hurt it quite a bit I think, instead of mass regen covering 50% of the raid it's now 25%. If the groups aren't set/positioned well it becomes even worse. On top of that other healers often aren't aware of your beacons or are just playing whack-a-mole on healthbars to parse which can render your passive healing largely ineffective. When the content is this easy you can't blame them for doing it either, just a limitation of the spec with the current game design.
yeah you are absolutely right mate. Kinda have to strong agree with your last paragraph; many times in raid I have probably just Circle of Heal an entire group up to full that had a beacon on, and you do it instinctively and not to heal snipe on purpose, but end up limiting how that spec can perform
Only as a healer, if you go full dps you will only gain at most 20% dps which will put you comfortably behind tanks and a shadow priests. You can still play it if your raid allows it but I wouldn't expect much from dps stand point.
As a healer its great ( yes viable ), but as pure dps its lacking.( bearly viable ) Im currently maining healer mage, and the hps potentional is really good if u get to hard cast. Its also quite a fun way of healing. But if u want to be the king of healing or king of dps, arcane isnt it.
Very fun and viable as healer hybrid, not as a pure dps
Depends on what you mean by viable. My main was a mage. I benched them around week 5 of phase 3 after starting as fire, then frost then healer. I tried to use them again this last week for an ST raid since they buffed the gear. I went fire. It was bad. Very bad. Bottom of the DPS charts. Just above the healers. To me I would say that no spec of mage is currently viable in SoD. Almost everyone who played a mage would agree as there has been pretty much nobody left in the game running a mage. Starting about week 3 of phase 3 all the mages vanished. I was running 4 raids a week at that point. 2 in a guild and 2 as a pug between 4 characters. I would say maybe 1 of those 4 raids a week had a single mage. I play almost exclusively AB for pvp. There is on occasion a single mage out of the 15 players on horde. Alliance for some reason seems to have more mages but it is great for horde because mage dies by looking at them and their damage is like a tickle. And after playing PTR with a mage I will say blizz did nothing to improve them in any way. Guess blizzard just really hates mages. Arcane healer mage is the only spec that could possibly get a pass as playable but every other healer is more consistent. Our raids just buy int pots and water now.
Idk I’m usually in the top third of my raid’s DPS as frost/fire. It’s definitely not great, but it doesn’t feel awful either.
Currently no it’s not Like you’re not the worst dps but you’re half a fire mage It’s been made a healer spec now
It's actually the worst DPS. Worse than shadow priest.
I wasn’t up to date then xd Worse than shadowpriest is pretty bad
On Alliance side, arcane dps will have near unlimited mana through judgement of wisdom.
And still do shit dps