I'll run the counter, and say that it'd be cool if Arcane was different than other mage specs, and used Arcane Explosion as their primary AoE. Dare I mention that some warlocks have to AoE in melee range, and despite the fact that they are whiny little babies about most things, Demo locks don't complain about melee range AoE.

The first problem is the numbers one, AE is often pretty expensive in mana, and relatively weak in damage, at least in Live. However, that's the easiest part in the world to fix. Just up the damage, lower the mana cost.

Second, the melee-danger component. Solution: add talents which increase personal safety as AE is spammed. 2% damage reduction for 6 seconds, stacks 5 times would be perfect. Too weak and short-duration to be gamebreaking in PvP, but powerful enough to keep a AE spamming Arcane Mage alive. It could be worked out some other way, maybe with self-healing based on damage dealt with AE, or something.

Third, having arcane get Spellflame Orb would help too. The one-minute cooldown means it can't be your primary AoE, but it would go a long way toward helping in various situations where you specifically need AoE "over there" which aren't too common in boss fights.

If the DPS and DPM numbers are high enough and the personal safety is addressed, that ought to do it for most AoE situations, with Spellflame Orb for special circumstances. What about those times where it really might not suffice to have a point-blank AoE? Well, folks in Wrath had to respec for the heaviest AoE slugfest fights, but there were, what, two of them in all of Wrath? Anub HM, and HM Arthas (to an extent). I'd hardly call that so damning of Arcane AoE being based around Arcane Explosion. It'd also just be kinda cool to be different and not work the same way as any other caster, with either a bland and second-rate Blizzard copy like Rain of Fire, or make Arcane Explosion into a cheap Mind Sear knockoff.

However, if you want Arcane to have a ranged AoE simply because you want to be lazy and not have to move, I've got no sympathy for you whatsoever.

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