Arcane Mage DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Midnight (12.0.1)

Note: you have High Voltage and Orb Mastery selected, which have significant anti-synergy. Make sure to use the presets if you want to see recommended builds instead of manually picking individual talents.

Note: you have Overpowered Missiles and Orb Mastery selected, which have significant anti-synergy. Make sure to use the presets if you want to see recommended builds instead of manually picking individual talents.

Currently, Arcane is in a bit of a weird situation, where the single-target and AoE rotation are practically identical, with only very minor changes. This is mostly because AoE damage highly revolves around Arcane Barrage, which has very strict usage due to talents like Intuition and various others making it so that you almost always want to cast Arcane Barrage with maximum Arcane Salvo stacks.

Additionally, Arcane Pulse is already used as part of the single-target rotation, which further causes the difference in rotations to be very minimal.

Below I list the differences you should apply to the single-target rotation based on various target counts.

1. On 2+ targets, always use Arcane Pulse as your filler instead of Arcane Blast. For more priority DPS, you can stil to using Arcane Blast at any target count, for significantly more priority target DPS at the cost of significant AoE DPS.
2. On 4+ targets, cast Arcane Orb whenever you have Clearcasting and less than 18 Arcane Salvo stacks.
3. On 3+ targets, in addition to the single-target Arcane Barrage conditions, also cast it if you have 4 Arcane Charge stacks, less than 18 Arcane Salvo stacks, and either a Clearcasting proc or an Arcane Orb ready. Basically, the goal here is to cast Arcane Barrages whenever you have a good way to get Arcane Charges back, but not so high Arcane Salvo stacks that it is better to wait until you have maxed stacks.
4. On 3+ targets, in addition to the single-target Arcane Barrage conditions, also cast it if you have 4 Arcane Charge stacks, less than 10 Arcane Salvo stacks, and either a Clearcasting proc or an Arcane Orb ready. Basically, the goal here is to cast Arcane Barrages whenever you have a good way to get Arcane Charges back, but not so high Arcane Salvo stacks that it is better to wait until you have maxed stacks.
5. That's all!

Arcane Salvo is a stacking buff which is granted by using Arcane Missiles, by default, which greatly increases Arcane Barrage damage. It can also be generated with Arcane Blast and Arcane Pulse when specced into Expanded Mind, which is generally always done due to how important Salvo stacks are. As Spellslinger, you also generate them from Arcane Orb and Arcane Barrage, and have a chance to generate them from Arcane Splinters.

Not only does Arcane Salvo itself greatly increase the damage of Arcane Barrage, with the addition of Intuition, having maximum Arcane Salvo stacks (20 as Spellslinger, 25 as Sunfury) becomes even more important, as the damage bonus only applies when you use Arcane Barrage on maximum stacks.

Due to this, Arcane Salvo and Intuition have a massive impact on the rotation, as the entire rotation basically revolves around trying to build up to maximum Arcane Salvo stacks efficiently, then using Arcane Barrage and making sure rebuilding both Arcane Charges and Arcane Salvo stacks is as efficient as possible.

Arcane Pulse is a spell that at first glance is very simple, but actually has a lot of small niche uses that cause it to be used in different ways. At its most basic, it is an AoE version of Arcane Blast. It does most things that Arcane Blast does: Generate Arcane Charges and Arcane Salvo stacks, while ramping up in both damage and mana cost as you get more Arcane Charges. The main difference being that is does AoE damage instead of single-target.

However, it has a couple of things that set it apart:

• It has a very high mana cost when used at 4 Arcane Charges, even higher than Arcane Blast, causing you to run yourself oom very quickly if used actively.
• It has a faster base cast speed than at 0 Arcane Charges than Arcane Blast, but a lower cast speed when at 4 Arcane Charges.
• Reverberate applies to it. Although this only applies the damage at 30% effectiveness, it causes double the Arcane Salvo stacks. This stacks with Impetus, causing you to gain 4 Arcane Salvo stacks from a single Arcane Pulse cast.

These effects cause Arcane Pulse to be used in a few interesting ways on single-target:

• Due to its faster cast speed (at low Arcane Charge stacks) and higher Arcane Salvo generation, Arcane Pulse is preferred over Arcane Blast when on low Arcane Charges to rebuild both Arcane Charges and Arcane Salvo quicker.
• When you are about to go into your big cooldowns ( Arcane Surge + Touch of the Magi), and you do not have max Arcane Salvo charges, it should be used to quickly cap Arcane Salvo charges because of its higher Arcane Salvo generation.

Arcane is one of the few DPS specs that cares about its mana, which is primarily driven by Arcane Charges. Arcane Charges are a special resource that stack up to 4 times, each stack greatly increasing the damage and mana cost of Arcane Blast and Arcane Pulse, while also greatly increasing the damage of Arcane Barrage. (but not the mana cost) Arcane Charges are mainly stacked by Arcane Blast on single-target, or Arcane Explosion and Arcane Pulse in AoE, but various other spells and talents also generate them.

Since Arcane Charges massively increase the damage of your core damaging abilities, you will generally want to spend as much time as possible casting abilities on 4 Arcane Charges, minimizing time spent casting spells on low Charges. However, only casting Arcane Blast while on 4 Arcane Charges will very quickly run you out of mana.

To handle this, Arcane has various tools. Arcane Barrage being the main one, as it resets Arcane Charges back to 0, resetting the mana cost increase as well as the damage, while itself doing massive damage, if used with high Arcane Salvo stacks.

This creates the core rotation of building up to 4 Arcane Charges -> getting max Arcane Salvo stacks -> casting a hard-hitting, stack resetting Arcane Barrage.

Arcane does have a few other tools to manage mana, notably Arcane Surge. Although Arcane Surge itself fully drains your mana, it also grants so much mana generation, that it actually causes you to regenerate to full mana after casting it. Although Arcane Surge damage scales with your mana when you cast it, you practically never care about this, because the extra damage is minor. So you actually use Arcane Surge instead as a method to regenerate back to full mana by casting it when you are low.

Then, there are a few other less common ways to generate mana, like using Evocation (only sometimes talented) or the passive Mana Adept (if talented).

Finally, arguably the most important method of regenerating your mana: Passive mana generation. Arcane has high mana generation, because your Mastery not only increases your damage, but also increases your passive mana generation, which throughout the entire fight actually adds up to a very large amount of total mana gained.

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 Surge is Arcane's primary DPS cooldown. It has a 90 second cooldown, and when used drains all of your mana for one big hit on your target and nearby enemies, dealing damage based on the mana spent. However, the real benefit comes after the initial cast, where it increases all your spell damage by a massive 35% for 15 seconds, while also greatly increasing your mana regeneration, which basically regenerates your mana to full mana during its duration.

Generally, you will want to use Arcane Surge immediately as it comes up, but it can be beneficial to delay it in certain cases, for example if your group is about to use Time Warp or a similar effect soon, or an important raid mechanic that needs high DPS is coming soon, or additional targets that come up, etc.

Touch of the Magi is a 45 second cooldown, which applies a debuff to your target, which accumulates 20% of all damage you deal to the target for 12 seconds, and then exploding for all of the accumulated damage to the target and nearby enemies. It also grants 4 Arcane Charges, making it so that you can use it immediately on the pull without needing to build up stacks.

Touch of the Magi and Arcane Surge have very tight timings, with Touch of the Magi having exactly half the cooldown of Arcane Surge. Since the timing is so close, it is critical you use Touch of the Magi as soon as it comes up, so you do not run into a situation where Touch of the Magi is not ready when Arcane Surge is.

Time Warp is an ability which buffs your entire party or raid group within 100 yards with 30% haste for 40 seconds. This buff is shared with multiple other spells like Bloodlust and Heroism. These all put a debuff on all your group members which blocks them from getting the effect again for 10 minutes, so you cannot get this same effect from multiple sources multiple times.

As Time Warp applies to the whole group, it is generally decided by the raid or party leader when it is used, to optimize usage for the whole group, instead of just using it when it is best for your personal usage. However, if there is no assigned time or you are in a pick up group without any real leadership in terms of strategy, it is generally a safe practice to use Time Warp right after combat starts so it is up while everyone has all of their DPS cooldowns ready. Of course make sure to only do this if there will be enemies active for the entire 40 second duration of the buff on the pull, as on some fights bosses might go inactive or do some kind of phase change early on in the fight.