TBC Classic Arcane Mage Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities

If you are not already familiar with all the Arcane Mage spells, or simply want to refresh your memory, you may find interest in the Spells Summary page. Knowing all your important spells helps you understand your class better, improving your performance and survival. This guide assumes you are running the Arcane Frost PvE build.

Which Mage Armor you will be using depends on your mana support. The general rule of thumb is, that if you never go oom (out of mana) in a fight, Molten Armor is better to use. If you go oom, Mage Armor is the better choice. However, this is just a rule of thumb and you should always use the Osthyvel's TBC Mage Sim to confirm which armor is better for your particular mana support situation. If you have enough time to regenerate mana between trash and AoE packs, Molten Armor is the best choice. Try to always be casting and not waste much time by moving. Carefully considered positioning and the use of Blink can reduce the time you are not casting. If you have to move, a Presence of Mind Arcane Blast and Fire Blast can reduce the damage loss from moving.

Your main rotation will be to cast Arcane Blast. The most important and challenging part of your rotation is to manage your mana properly, so you can spend it all and be at 0 mana at the end of a fight. Some encounters also allow you to pre-stack the Arcane Blast debuff to 3 stacks, so you can start casting with 3 debuffs already.

1. Cast Arcane Blast as your main spell and during cooldowns.
   • When using your cooldowns, make sure to have enough mana to be casting Arcane Blast during all of Arcane Power. Casting Frostbolt during cooldowns is usually a DPS loss.
   • Use your cooldowns as often as possible and stack as many damage increasing effects as possible.
2. Use your filler rotation to restore/conserve mana:
   • 3x Arcane Blast, 3x Frostbolt repeat.
   • At higher haste levels, or during Bloodlust/Heroism plus Icy Veins, it can be 3x Arcane Blast, 4x Frostbolt, repeat.
   • The purpose of this rotation is to cast 3 or 4 Frostbolts (depending on haste levels), then begin a new Arcane Blast with faster cast speed. By the time it finishes, the Arcane Blast debuff will have expired, resulting in a lower mana cost. Together with a Shadow Priest or other mana support, this rotation is mana positive, restoring more mana than it uses. 1500-3000 mana is usually a good time to start this rotation.

Your core AoE spell is Arcane Explosion. With Blessing of Salvation and Arcane Subtlety it will do so little threat, that you can start AoE after one or two ticks of Consecration. This makes you one of the top AoE damage classes, because you usually can start with AoE right off the bat, while other classes have to wait a bit because of high threat (e.g. Warlocks with Seed of Corruption).

1. Low-Threat (can be used early):
   • Your core AoE spell is Arcane Explosion.
2. Higher-Threat (give the tank a threat-lead):
   • If you hit all mobs in front of you, Cone of Cold does a bit more damage, so use it on cooldown.
   • Flamestrike can be pre-cast and increase your damage, but comes at the cost of higher threat.
   • Blizzard is your safety ranged ability and can be used to slow, if the Improved Blizzard talent is taken.
   • Use Engineering explosives, such as Super Sapper Charge or Fel Iron Bomb.

At some point you will hit the AoE damage cap of ~10.100 damage per Arcane Explosion cast. At some point, the only way to increase your damage per second beyond this cap, is to equip more Spell Haste gear. More Spell Haste means more spells per second.

As an Arcane Mage, you basically want to stack as many damage-increasing cooldowns as possible simultaneously in both Single-Target and AoE rotations, most optimal at full mana. The only exception to this rule is, if you hit the AoE damage cap, or if you go below the Global Cooldown (GCD) cap of 1.0 seconds. However, sometimes it is also better to go below the GCD cap. Only the TBC Mage Sim can give a definite answer what is best. You can easily track your haste and global cooldown with this global cooldown tracking WeakAura.

There can be a lot to think about to really optimize your cooldown usage and it can be a very tedious task. However, do not overthink it or let it discourage you. The cooldown stacking macro below will do the job most of the time. Taking your time and gradually improving is basically the way every good Arcane Mage has to go.

Stacking cooldowns and damage-increasing abilities can be optimized by using a macro like this:

• /use 13
• /use Destruction Potion
• /use Mana Emerald
• /cast Icy Veins
• /cast Arcane Power
• /cast Arcane Blast
• /cqs

This macro will use your trinket in the top trinket slot (e.g. Icon of the Silver Crescent), a Destruction Potion (if you use them over Super Mana Potions), a Mana Emerald (if you have Serpent-Coil Braid), Icy Veins, Arcane Power at the same time and starts casting an Arcane Blast. If you wish to use this macro for AoE spells, such as Arcane Explosion, just replace Arcane Blast with it. The bottom trinket slot will use the number 14, instead of 13. '/cqs' skips the spell queue for this macro, making it spammable. For AoE you can also add in a line with '/use Super Sapper Charge'. For more information on Mage addons and how to properly write basic Mage macros, you may read the Mage Macros section below:

A few more important tricks for cooldown stacking are that at higher haste levels you may want to desyncronize Bloodlust/Heroism and Icy Veins, in order not to go too far below the GCD cap. Further, delaying the use of Mana Emerald (with Serpent-Coil Braid) can be reasonable, for example if you have 13.000/14.000 mana and the Mana Emerald restores 3.300 mana. In this case, it can be more reasonable to wait with using your cooldowns at ~10.000 mana, to not waste the restored mana. However, if you do not need the additional mana (e.g. with good mana support or short fight lenghts), or using your cooldowns earlier will grant you another set of full cooldowns, it may be better to just blow the cooldowns early or exclude Mana Emerald from the stacking. Talking about Mana Emerald usage, using the Super Mana Potion as early as possible is advised. The Potion is on a 2-minutes cooldown and sometimes can be used more than once, if used early, resulting in more mana and more DPS.

Utilizing Innervate, Evocation, Mana Tide Totem (even from multiple Restoration Shamans, if they do not need it), Mana Emerald, and Super Mana Potion as often as possible, even during trash, can greatly enhance your mana mangement and your performance. If you have a good Shadow Priest to Multi-Dot with Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain in appropriate AoE situations, it will restore even more mana and apply the Misery debuff to more mobs, increasing their spell damage taken by 5%.

The right usage of Cold Snap to gain another Icy Veins or a second Ice Block is also something you should think over. Sometimes it can be better to use double Icy-Veins straight off the bat, sometimes it is better to wait with Cold Snap, because Cold Snap desyncronizes your Arcane Power and Icy Veins. Even casting Icy Veins, Cold Snapping and then using all your cooldowns in a big macro can be beneficial. As always, only the TBC Mage Sim can answer these kinds of optimization questions.

If you have not read our detailed page about Arcane Mage spells yet, here is a list with the most important ones:

• Arcane Blast is your main source of single target damage. Minimize the time spent moving and maximize the time casting, to effectively increase your DPS. If you need to change positions, try Blinking instead of walking, as this will almost always be faster than moving. Arcane Blast also places the 8 seconds debuff on you. If you start a new Arcane Blast cast at the last second of the Arcane Blast debuff, it will cast with the 1.5 second cast speed, but since Mana cost is calculated at the end of spells with a cast time, your spell will hit when the debuff has dropped and the Mana cost will be the base Mana cost instead of the stacked cost. In short, you will get a 1.5-second cast time Arcane Blast for 195 Mana — 39 Mana more with 2 pieces of the T5 set — instead of 634.
• Frostbolt acts as filler ability in both Arcane specs. The rotation is explained above.
• Arcane Power is your first DPS cooldown, increasing your magical damage and Mana cost by 30% for 15 seconds. This ability has a 3-minute cooldown. Use this ability as often as you can, as not using it when there is an opportunity is lost damage. As with any cooldown in the game, try to time it so that your cooldown time does not get interrupted by having to move or deal with boss mechanics. If you are under the effect of Bloodlust/Heroism, for single-target, cast this ability with Icy Veins to gain maximum damage. For AoE, it can always be used, but be careful with AoE threat. The recommended macros for this ability can be found above.
• Icy Veins is your second DPS cooldown. Use it as often as possible and try to use it in a phase of a boss fight that does not interrupt your casting with movement or anti-casting mechanics. For example using it right before a 10-second stun mechanic on a boss makes this cooldown 50% worse. A good macro to use Icy Veins is written and explained above.
• Cold Snap — As Icy Veins and Arcane Power both have a 3-minute cooldown, it is important to time Cold Snap, so Icy Veins and Arcane Power are not desynced. One way of doing that is to use Icy Veins at the start of a fight, after 20 seconds Cold Snap, then use Icy Veins and Arcane Power. This way you make sure Icy Veins and Arcane Power come off cooldown at the same time. Cold Snap can also be used to reset Ice Block or Frost Nova for survival or mob control reasons.
• Fire Blast will be cast when you are moving or to finish off an enemy with a last cast, as Fire Blast has no travel time.
• Presence of Mind is also called PoM, and can also be used as a finisher with:

• /cast Presence of Mind
• /cast Arcane Blast
• /cqs

• Arcane Blast is chosen in here, as it does not have travel time and instantly hits the target. If you want to prevent your Arcane Blast debuff from running out, you can also use the macro above to reset the debuff's rotation to 8 seconds. Another use for Presence of Mind outside of instantly Polymorphing enemies and the two cases described above, is damaging enemies while you are moving. If you want to use Presence of Mind with another spell, for example the AoE spell Flamestrike, simply replace Arcane Blast in the macro with Flamestrike.
• Remove Lesser Curse — While this is no damage spell, it is of high importance to decurse on some fights, and doing so is part of being a good Mage.
• Arcane Intellect/Arcane Brilliance — It is important to keep this buff up on you and your group for a higher Critical Strike chance with spells and more Mana. Therefore it is part of your rotation.
• Offensive Potion/Gem is not an ability per se, however, it is useful and should be part of your rotation. Every time you use a Mana potion or gem, you lose time when swapping back to your damage spells. This is all natural because of human reaction time. However, the Offensive Potion/Gem, which is the term for a macro, can counter this time loss. It is a simple macro to use your Mana consumable and start a new cast right after:

• /use Super Mana Potion
• /cast Arcane Blast
• /cqs

And:

• /use Mana Emerald
• /cast Arcane Blast
• /cqs

This way, you will never lose cast time again between using a Mana cooldown and damage spell cast.

Playing a Mage does not only mean to press the Arcane Blast button, but also managing your Mana, using crowd control spells and making sure you survive.

Please consider taking a look at the Arcane Mage spells if you want to refresh your memory.