Arcane Mage DPS Mythic+ Tips — Season 4

Arcane has very potent AoE damage and very potent priority damage. Arcane only has 2 downsides in Mythic+, which is that it has to give up some single target damage for its best AoE build, and that for its AoE damage, it has to be in melee range, which as a caster can be quite dangerous.

If you are unfamiliar with Mythic+ and its associated general mechanics, you can read more about it on our Dragonflight Mythic+ Season 4 page below.

Although the base rotations outlined in the standard rotation page still apply to Mythic+, Mythic+ usually has different types of damage requirements than raids do. If you are unsure about the standard rotations of Arcane, check out our rotation page below.

One of the biggest rotational changes is how you should look at your burn and conserve phases. Since there is generally a bit of downtime in Mythic+, for example, due to moving to the next pack of mobs, or the healer having to drink, you can be more aggressive with your Mana. Especially if you are running Shimmer, when a pack is about to die, you can quickly use both charges to move ahead to the next pack and then get a couple of seconds of drinking in to regain Mana. In practice, this means you can spend almost every trash pack purely burning your Mana and then regenerating it in between pulls.

The AoE Burn Phase outlined on our rotation page is also the way you should open up on any new packs. The only small difference is that you should use Evocation in-between packs to avoid wasting time on it while you are in combat.

One of the most important parts of your damage in Mythic+ will come from how efficiently you move between packs and how you use the downtime between packs. Below, we have some tips on how to manage this.

1. Make sure you start the run with plenty of water (100+ usages)
2. Try to fit in as many drinks of water as possible without falling behind. The easiest way to do this is to already Blink or Shimmer ahead right before a pack dies. You can then usually get 2 or 3 seconds of drinking in, even if your group is chain-pulling. Getting in frequent 2 or 3 seconds of drinking is a big damage gain as it means you do not have to spend any time conserving Mana while actually in combat. Do not underestimate how much Mana you can get back across a run, even with just a couple of seconds of drinking between every pull.
3. Avoid using Evocation in combat whenever possible. On boss fights, using Evocation is fine, but outside of boss fights, you should always try to fit Evocation in in-between packs. Make sure to use Shimmer or Slipstream to follow your group toward the next pack while casting Evocation.

The main reason to bring an Arcane Mage to a Mythic+ group is for its damage, but aside from that, it also has some very valuable utility, which makes every Mythic+ group want at least one Mage, especially since Dragonflight, where Arcane Mages can get a lot of crowd control in their talents:

• Arcane Intellect is a big boost for both the other caster DPS in the group, as well as additional healing for the healer.
• Time Warp is a required cooldown for any Mythic+ group.
• Remove Curse can be useful to dispel Curses in some dungeons.
• An Arcane Mage can add a lot of crowd control in the form of Dragon's Breath, Polymorph, Blast Wave, Ice Nova, Ring of Frost, or even Mass Slow.
• Spellsteal can be useful in some dungeons to remove dangerous buffs from enemy targets. Sometimes, it can also be used as a big DPS boost for the Arcane Mage by Spellstealing beneficial buffs that increase your damage.
• Mass Barrier can be brought as a decent defensive cooldown for the group.
• Mass Invisibility can be very useful to skip certain packs.

Below are the suggested talents for Mythic+. There are a couple of choices you can make with the talents, which are discussed below. If you are interested in talents for raiding or other PvE scenarios, check out our generic talents page.

These are our suggested talents for Mythic+.

You can easily import the talent tree below via the "copy export string." button.

There are a couple of options when it comes to setting up your talent tree for Mythic+. Below, we will go over some of the changes you could make to the above tree.

• Replace Mass Barrier for Mass Invisibility if your dungeon route requires the ability to skip enemy packs and have no one else providing the group invisibility (a Rogue, or using potions).
• Replace Temporal Warp for Time Anomaly if you are going to be holding onto Time Warp or similar effects for a long time and not using them close to on cooldown.
• Replace Remove Curse for any defensive talent of your choice when there are no Curses to dispel in the dungeon, you plan to do, or if someone else will handle the dispelling.
• Replace Spellsteal for any defensive talent of your choice when there are no buffs worth dispelling in the dungeon you plan to do.
• Replace Ring of Frost and/or Ice Nova for any defensive talent of your choice if you do not need the extra crowd control.
• Replace Blast Wave for any defensive talent of your choosing. Both function as AoE interrupts, so we generally suggest not removing these unless you are 100% certain all interrupts will be handled without you.
• Opt out of Ice Cold (and the nodes leading to it) for any defensive nodes of your choosing if you need the immunity of Ice Block for the dungeon you are doing.

• Replace Orb Barrage for Conjure Mana Gem if you want to focus more on boss damage. We generally don't recommend this unless you really want the extra boss damage, as Orb Barrage is a significant damage increase on trash packs.

When choosing your trinkets, we recommend simulating yourself on Raidbots using the Patchwerk option for raids and single-target, and selecting multiple boss targets for simulating Mythic+ or add target fights. Usually, we recommend using trinkets that proc stats rather than single-target damage dealers for Mythic+.

You can also get a quick overview of good Mythic+ Trinkets on our Gearing page, specifically the Simulation chart for multi-target scenarios.

For an opinion list of how Arcane fares against other DPS specs in Mythic+, please see our Tier List page: