Recently, several buff suggestions for Arcanist have been raised in the feedback thread.
I’m interested in how many users want to change to Arcanist and what changes they want. Please vote and discuss.;）
I don’t think the arcanist issue should be thought in terms of more/less attack/defensive power. It’s more a question of utility and removing what’s been useless for ages:
- increasing Arcane Will’s threshold per point spent (AW’s DA will be buffed in 1.1.2.0 if I remember correctly);
- add a little something to Fabric of Reality;
- get rid of that useless physical RR on OFF and Inferno and put something sexy instead;
- Star Pact: aether to elemental instead of cold only; it is blocking some lightning builds possibilities and would open some fire options;
- RR on Nullification was proposed and seems honest.
- damage penalty on Maiven’s =0% at 12/12, is also a nice proposition.
Honestly… I kind of wish Arcanists had another spell altogether? OFF and CT are too similar for my tastes (just 2 PBAoEs with CD) and would like it if either OFF or CT was base, and it just had 2 transmuters. One transmuter would be wrath of agrivix and another would be to swap between OFF and CT. Then you can have wrath of agrivix do something fun for OFF!
The new spell can be… literally anything? Firewall, ice pillars, just a big ol’ classic fireball attack with juicy damage, summon flesh hulk ( :eek: ), mirror image, etc. Also give it teleport as a base ability 
As to address the OP’s topic, I would definitely like aether to elemental on star pact instead of just cold like Belzzz stated. Maiven’s shouldn’t really have a damage penalty at all IMO. I just look at Arcanist and go “Man, a lot of these abilities and passives are kind of… boring?” I blame Magicka.
Oh and let me use Devastation with 2handers because they’re just really pointy staves when you think about it.