Arcane Mage DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — Midnight Season 1

On this page we will go over the best builds to play as an Arcane Mage, for both Hero Talents.

Make sure to also read the descriptions of the builds to help you decide which build is best for your situation!

2.

Best Talents for Arcane Mage

Spellslinger Pure Single-Target Spellslinger Raid Spellslinger Mythic+ Spellslinger Delves Spellslinger Arcane Missiles Sunfury Pure Single-Target Sunfury Raid Sunfury Mythic+

1.1.

Best Delve Talents for Arcane Mage

This build is focused on making Delves as smooth of an experience as possible. It focuses on maximizing your survival and kiting capabilities, by speccing into more mobility and crowd-control, while giving up very minimal DPS. This build is also excellent for outdoor content.

You can easily import the talent tree below into the game by using the "copy export string" button below.

1.2.

Best Spellslinger Single-Target Raid Talents for Arcane Mage

This build is currently the best performing pure single-target build. This works great for encounters where you will only fight a single enemy throughout the entire encounter. If there are additional targets during the fight, even if only for a relatively small portion, I recommend the Cleave Raid build.

You can easily import the talent tree below into the game by using the "Export Talents" button below.

1.3.

Best Spellslinger Raid Cleave Talents for Arcane Mage

This build is practically identical to the single-target build, only swapping Mana Bomb into Resonance.

This is generally the go-to build for most raid encounters, as almost none of them are pure single-target. If however you are doing content where you only need pure single-target DPS, check out the single-target raid talents.

You can easily import the talent tree below into the game by using the "Export Talents" button below.

1.4.

Best Spellslinger AoE/Mythic+ Talents for Arcane Mage

This build opts into Arcane Pulse and related talents for more AoE DPS, and optimizes utility talents for Mythic+ content. It only gives up very limited single-target DPS to gain significantly more AoE DPS.

You can easily import the talent trees below into the game by using the "Export Talents" button below.

1.5.

Spellslinger Arcane Missiles Talents for Arcane Mage

This build is worse than the Arcane Orb / Orb Mastery based builds listed in the other sections by about 5-7%, but is listed here in case you dislike the Arcane Orb based playstyle.

You can easily import the talent trees below into the game by using the "Export Talents" button below.

1.6.

Best Sunfury Single-Target Talents for Arcane Mage

This build is currently the best performing pure single-target build (for Sunfury). This works great for encounters where you will only fight a single enemy throughout the entire encounter. If there are additional targets during the fight, even if only for a relatively small portion, I recommend the Cleave / Raid build.

Note: Sunfury builds are currently around 5-10% worse than Spellslinger builds on single-target.

You can easily import the talent tree below into the game by using the "Export Talents" button below.

1.7.

Best Sunfury Raid Cleave Talents for Arcane Mage

This build is practically identical to the single-target build, only swapping Mana Bomb into Resonance.

Note: Sunfury Cleave / AoE builds are currently significantly worse than Spellslinger builds, so I highly recommend avoiding Sunfury builds in Cleave / AoE scenarios. (20-25% worse)

You can easily import the talent tree below into the game by using the "Export Talents" button below.

1.8.

Best Sunfury AoE/Mythic+ Talents for Arcane Mage

This build focuses on maximizing AoE damage, sacrificing some single-target DPS for significantly more AoE DPS, and is the recommend Sunfury build for content where you will be fighting multiple enemies most of the time, like Dungeons or some Raid bosses with consistent adds.

Note: Sunfury AoE builds are currently significantly worse than Spellslinger builds, so I highly recommend avoiding Sunfury builds in AoE scenarios. (~20% worse)

You can easily import the talent trees below into the game by using the "Export Talents" button below.

For more information on Mythic+ talents, you can check out our dedicated Mythic+ page below.

Arcane has the following Apex Talent:

• Touch of the Archmage: Touch of the Magi increases the damage your target receives from you by 15%.
• Touch of the Archmage: Arcane Charges further increase the damage of Arcane Blast, Arcane Pulse, and Arcane Barrage. Also increases Arcane Missiles damage. Has 2 ranks. Note: This always counts, not just during Touch of the Magi.
• Touch of the Archmage: When Touch of the Magi explodes, it leaves behind a pulsing rune on its target, dealing 75% of its damage over 6 seconds to nearby enemies. This damage is increased by 50% on the initial Touch of the Magi target.

The Apex Talent is very strong for both Hero specs, and is virtually always taken. It has no meaningful rotational impact, but it does put even more emphasis on Touch of the Magi, making it very important that you use Touch of the Magi on targets that will live the entire duration, as you will lose a lot of damage if the target dies halfway through the duration.

Arcane has access to the Sunfury and Spellslinger Hero Talent trees.

Sunfury spawns an Arcane Phoenix alongside you during Arcane Surge, throwing out spells of its own providing damage and some utility. Gameplay wise, the primary change is that after Arcane Surge ends, you get the very powerful Arcane Soul buff, which makes Arcane Barrage grant Clearcasting, generate 4 Arcane Charges, generate 5 Arcane Salvo charges and casting it does not consume any Arcane Salvo charges. What this means in practice is that during Arcane Soul, you can simply spam very hard hitting Arcane Barrages.

Spellslinger is all about providing you lots of small passive bonuses to all your spells and applying many Arcane Splinters to your target. Gameplay wise, the tree is fairly passive, however, all of the passive effects together grant you quite a few extra Arcane Salvo stacks, which in turn enables you to cast more Arcane Barrages. Spellslinger also enables builds that play around Orb Mastery, because of its interactions with Arcane Orb. These builds play quite a bit different because they consume Clearcasting with Arcane Orb instead of Arcane Missiles.

Currently, Spellslinger is ahead in DPS in practically all content, which is why it is the recommended build. Sunfury is around 5-10% DPS behind on single-target and significantly more as more targets are present, so I generally do not recommend playing Sunfury with current tuning.

Multiple talents require a change to your rotation to use them optimally. You can find more information on how your rotation will look after selecting your talents on our rotation page below.

If you are looking for in-depth explanations of what each talent does, we suggest reading through the spell summary page.

Since Battle for Azeroth, there is the option to enable "War Mode." Enabling War Mode grants the following benefits:

• PvP talents enabled in the outdoor world.
• 10% increase in World Quest rewards at max level.
• 10% more experience gained while leveling.
• Earn Conquest Points, which can reward gear every week.

With the benefits of enabling War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is recommended enabling the feature to maximize your leveling and rewards at max level. However, doing so will enable PvP combat and the possibility of being attacked by members of the opposite faction while leveling or doing World Quests exists.

In this section, we will rank the War Mode talents for leveling and outdoor content.

1. Temporal Shield is off the Global Cooldown, so it can be used without sacrificing any damage and is very strong for when you know damage is incoming. You can simply tank the damage and heal back to full Health when the shield ends.
2. Ring of Fire is a great tool for AoE damage in the open world, especially on high-health targets.
3. Chrono Shift is an incredible open-world kiting and mobility tool.