New WoW player, just hit 70s. Looking for more experienced rebuttal to my ignorant analysis of Arcane Mage pre/post patch:

Pre:
AM was wholly defined by Arcane Charges and the pull/push of scaling damage and even higher scaling mana costs. The burn/conserve phases.

Your core spells (Blast, Missiles, Explosion, Barrage) all scaled with ACs
Missiles were free but only castable on proc.

This led to a flexible, fluid playstyle rewarding quick pivots in reaction to procs. You were free to change your focus from ST to AoE or back on a dime. Rarely did you spam the same spell repeatedly - the general ebb and release of charges was constant, but the particular rotation was unique to your cooldowns, procs, and enemy situation (barring a fight opener, those were pretty standard).

Post:
Only blast and Barrage scale with ACs.
The proc moves to clearcasting - free Missiles/Explosion and slightly higher damage, but can no longer be stacked.

My impression is that for AoE, I'll just cast Explosion. Ad infinitum. There is no need to deal with ACs because they don't relate to Explosion anymore.

My impression is that for ST, I'll have something resembling the previous rotation except I'll need to clearcast as soon as it's up rather than storing it up for bigger spikes (rewarding twitchy reflex reactions more than planning out a new rotation over the next couple seconds).

What am I missing? It feels like the texture and feel of the AM has been (somewhat, in the case of ST) removed. I don't really care about the damage numbers (tuning can always be changed up or down), but the rhythm of the class feels hugely altered, and I don't know what it's being replaced with. Thoughts appreciated.