WotLK Classic Arcane Mage Spec, Builds, Talents, and Glyphs
On this page, you will find out the best PvE talent choices and builds for your Arcane Mage in WotLK Classic, as well as advised glyphs.
Best Talent Build for Arcane Mages
Arcane Mage talents aim to maximize single-target and AoE damage, as well as burst damage.
Leveling Builds
If you were looking for a leveling-oriented build please refer to our Mage leveling guide.
Talent Build
For raiding, we recommended Arcane Mages to use the standard 56/3/12
"Arcane IV" spec. This spec focuses on dealing burst damage with
Arcane Blast and 
Arcane Missiles during
Arcane Power, 
Icy Veins, and 
Bloodlust/
Heroism. The spec can be modified to have the
Permafrost and 
Improved Blizzard talents for more
security, but is a slight DPS loss. Further, points can be shifted from
the Arcane talents 
Magic Attunement and 
Arcane Barrage into
Student of the Mind or Arcane Stability. The points of
Incineration in the Fire tree can also be used for
Arcane Stability, which gives your Arcane Missiles pushback
protection. However, since Arcane Missiles are not your main nuke and
this talent is only really useful if you take a lot of damage in short
intervals, this is a niche thing. Student of the Mind versus
Magic Attunement is also a point where different opinions can
arise. On the one hand, the benefit from Spirit (buffed by Student of
the Mind) is rather low in most situations; on the other hand it is better
than no passive DPS increase. However, Magic Attunement increases the
range of your 
Polymorph, 
Counterspell, 
Spellsteal and
Remove Curse and all Arcane damage spells (except for
Arcane Explosion) by 6 yards. This allows you to DPS earlier after
movement phases, makes your positioning easier, and gives your utility spells
a higher range (e.g. it decreases time spent running to decurse someone or to
sheep a target). Taking Arcane Barrage over a very small spirit
increase from the Student of the Mind talent is a completely
reasonable move if you ever want to deal damage while moving (which you
want).
Another benefit of Arcane IV is the decreased cooldown on Icy Veins
and 
Ice Block and that your Blizzard does very high
DPS through the Critical Strike damage modifiers of 
Spell Power and
Ice Shards.
Important Arcane Mage Talents
Arcane Tree
Arcane Subtlety decreases the threat you do with your Arcane
spells by 40% and decreases the chance your helpful spells will be dispelled
by 30%.
This talent is key, as it will make it very hard for you to pull aggro, be it
with Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles or
Arcane Explosion.
Arcane Focus increases your chance to hit with Arcane spells by
3%. This allows Arcane Mages to gear for much more offensive stats than any
other Mage spec in the game, as you will need only 8% more Spell Hit from buffs,
enchants, and gear.
Arcane Stability makes Arcane Missiles immune
to spell pushback.
Arcane Concentration gives you a 10% chance of entering a
Clearcasting state after any attack goes off. This gives you an average 10%
reduced Mana cost on your damaging spells. In conjunction with
Arcane Potency, this also increases your chance to crit while
clearcasting by 30%.
Magic Attunement increases the
range of your Polymorph, Counterspell, Spellsteal,
Remove Curse, and all Arcane damage spells (except for
Arcane Explosion) by 6 yards. Further, it increases the effect of
Amplify Magic and Dampen Magic by 50%. Amplify Magic can be
very powerful in fights without much Magic damage.
Spell Impact gives your main DPS spells a 6% damage bonus.
Student of the Mind increases your total Spirit by 4%, which gives
you slightly more Critical Strike rating from 
Molten Armor.
Focus Magic is a powerful buff to be cast on a friendly target. It
increases their Critical Strike chance with spells by 3%. If they score a
Critical Strike, your Critical Strike chance is also increased by 3% for
10 seconds.
Arcane Meditation allows 50% of your out of combat Mana
regeneration to continue while casting.
Torment the Weak gives your main DPS spells a 12% damage bonus if
your target is slowed in any way (physical/spell/movement slow), which they
usually are from a Death Knight's
Icy Touch or a Warrior's 
Thunder Clap.
Presence of Mind makes your next Mage spell with a cast time
of less than 10 seconds an instant spell. This can be used to instantly
Polymorph enemies, or to make a damage spell instant.
Further, PoM also triggers Arcane Potency (see below!).
Channeled spells do not consume the instant-cast effect of this spell, so you
can use the Critical Strike chance on, say,
Blizzard and follow it up with an instant-cast 
Flamestrike.
Arcane Mind increases your total Intellect by 15%, making
Intellect a more useful stat together with the 
Mind Mastery
talent, which turns 15% of your Intellect into Spell Power.
Arcane Instability will make all your spells hit 3% harder
and gives you a 3% higher Critical Strike chance with all spells.
Arcane Potency increases the Critical Strike chance of your
next damaging spell by 30% after gaining Clearcasting or Presence of Mind.
However, this talent is a little bit tricky, as only the first
missile of Arcane Missiles benefits from the crit bonus, while a whole
Blizzard benefits from it.
Arcane Empowerment makes Arcane Missiles gain
45% more damage from Spell Power effects and the damage of your
Arcane Blast by 9% of your Spell Power. It also increases the damage of
everyone in your raid and party by 3%.
Arcane Power is a damage cooldown that makes all your spells
deal 20% more damage, but also increases their Mana cost by 20%. This ability
lasts for 15 seconds and has a 84-second cooldown with the 
Arcane Flows
talent.
Arcane Flows reduces the cooldown of Arcane Power (84s),
Presence of Mind (84s), and 
Invisibility (126s) by 30% and the
4-minute cooldown of 
Evocation by another 2 minutes. Another small tip
is that the Tier 3 2-set bonus (Frostfire Regalia) reduces the cooldown of
Evocation by a minute. With this in mind, you can swap to the 2 pieces, wait
for a second (the bonus needs a bit to activate), Evocate, and swap back to
your normal gear. Be sure to only use this strategy out of combat, as you
can only switch back to your normal gear out of combat and Tier 3 is terrible
to wear during an encounter.
Mind Mastery turns 15% of your Intellect into Spell Power.
Missile Barrage gives your Arcane Blast a 40% and
Arcane Barrage a 20% chance to halve the cast time (the tooltip is
misleading) of your next Arcane Missiles and make them cost no Mana.
Netherwind Presence Increases your Spell Haste by 6%.
Spell Power increases the Critical Strike damage bonus of all
spells by 50%, making your Arcane spells crit for 175% damage, or 182% with
Chaotic Skyflare Diamond, instead of 150%.
Arcane Barrage hits the enemy with an instant-cast missile. This
spell is very useful while moving and to reset your Arcane Blast
stacks.
Fire Tree
Incineration increases your chance to critically hit with
Arcane Blast by 6%.
Frost Tree
Ice Floes reduces the cooldown of Ice Block (240s) and
Icy Veins (144s) by 20%.
Improved Frostbolt makes your filler Frostbolt cast
0.2 seconds faster. This is a rather unimportant filler talent.
Precision increases your chance to hit with all spells by
3%. This allows Arcane Mages to gear for much more offensive stats than any
other Mage spec in the game, as you will need only 8% more Spell Hit from
buffs, enchants, and gear.
Ice Shards combined with Spell Power makes your
Frost spell Critical Strikes deal 225% damage, or 236% with
Chaotic Skyflare Diamond, instead of 150%. This talent makes
Blizzard your strongest AoE spell.
Icy Veins increases your casting speed by 20% and gives you
a 100% spell pushback protection for 20 seconds. Does not protect from
interrupt effects or stuns.
Best Glyphs for Arcane Mages
The best Arcane Mage Glyphs are 
Glyph of Arcane Blast,
Glyph of Arcane Missiles, and Glyph of Molten Armor (Major), and
Glyph of Arcane Intellect and Glyph of Slow Fall (Minor). The third
glyph is your personal choice. Further, one could argue that
Glyph of Fire Ward and Glyph of Frost Ward are better minor glyphs
than any other, but the use of these is very, very niche, so this
guide will stick to the quality of life glyphs. Below you will find a complete
list of glyphs, in case you would like to experiment with them, e.g. for
farming purposes.
Minor Glyphs:
Glyph of Arcane Intellect- Glyph of Blast Wave
- Glyph of Fire Ward
- Glyph of Frost Armor
- Glyph of Frost Ward
- Glyph of Slow Fall
- Glyph of the Penguin
Changelog
- 18 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Phase 2 release ahead of Ulduar raid release.
- 14 Sep. 2022: Page 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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