TBC Classic Arcane Mage Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities
On this page, you will learn how to optimize the rotation of your Arcane Mage in both single-target and multiple-target PvE situations in TBC Classic. We also have advanced sections about cooldowns, procs, etc. in order to minmax your DPS.
Arcane Mage Rotations
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.
Single-Target Rotation
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.
- 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.
- When using your cooldowns, make sure to have enough mana to be casting
- 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.
- 3x
AoE 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).
- Low-Threat (can be used early):
- Your core AoE spell is
Arcane Explosion.
- Your core AoE spell is
- 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.
- If you hit all mobs in front of you,
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.
Cooldowns
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:
Additional Tricks For More DPS
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.
Detailed Information About Arcane Main DPS Spells
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.
Other Useful Combat Abilities
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.
Changelog
- 24 Jul. 2025: Updated for TBC Anniversary.
- 20 Dec. 2021: Updated to be in line with passive Haste.
- 15 Oct. 2021: Updated Global Cooldown info to fit the current 1s GCD.
- 13 Aug. 2021: Updated Global Cooldown info to fit the current 0.75s GCD.
- 30 May 2021: Guide added.
This guide has been written by Wrdlbrmpft aka Arcanaenus, playing Mage since 2008. He is usually found in the Mage Discord, where you may also ask him questions his guides do not answer.
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