WotLK Classic Arcane Mage Stat Priority
On this page, you will find out the optimal PvE stat priority for your Arcane Mage in WotLK Classic. We first present the stat priority, before delving into more complex explanations.
Stat Priority for Arcane Mage
Stat values for Arcane Mages depend on your playstyle, boss kill times, raid setup, and support, so it is not easy to give a definite answer on this topic. The best way to find out your stat weights for a specific fight is to use Osthyvel's Mage Sim. If you do not want to go through the trouble of simming, the stat priority below has been proven to be correct for most scenarios.
- Spell Hit rating to cap
- Spell power ≥ Haste rating;
- Critical Strike rating;
- Spirit;
- Intellect;
- Stamina;
- MP5;
Stats explained for Arcane Mage
Arcane Mages have the most complex interaction with their stats and raiding environment of all Mage specs. The benefit of each stat hugely varies with fight length, Mana support, and cooldown usage. Learn more about that below.
Hit rating
In TBC, the Hit cap was 16%, but you always had a 1% chance to miss spells
that could not be avoided. The Hit cap in WotLK is 17% and once you have
reached it, you will not miss spells on bosses any more. All your
spells except Arcane spells, will not gain any Hit bonus in the meta Fire spec.
Arcane Spells, such as Arcane Explosion gain 3% from
Arcane Focus.
The
Elemental Precision talent from the Frost tree would still give you
3% Hit for all spells, but the meta Fire spec does not go into the Frost tree.
However, in any standard raid composition you gain 3% either from a
Balance Druid's
Improved Faerie Fire or
from a Shadow Priest's
Misery. This puts
you at 3 out of 17% hit in the default case, which means you need 14% more Hit
from gear. Alliance Mages can benefit from the Draenei Racial
Heroic Presence, gaining 1% more Hit, but only if that Draenei is in
their group, as the buff is not raid-wide. In this case you would be at 4 out
of 17% Hit, requiring you to get 13% more Hit. In any case, should you lack
either the Druid's or the Priest's hit debuff, you need
3% more Hit from gear. The lack of hit gear is also what makes Fire Mages
in particular scale rather poorly in the beginning of the expansion. In later
phases, the best gear automatically has some hit added to it, but in the beginning
it is mostly either hit or another offensive stat, not both.
At Level 80, for each 1% hit, you need 26.23 hit rating. The table below shows you how much hit % and hit rating you need at Level 80 with our recommended Arcane Mage PvE Talents, depending on your debuff situation.
Enemy Level | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 (Boss) | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Hit % | Rating | Hit % | Rating | Hit % | Rating | Hit % | Rating | |
No buffs/debuffs | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 288.53 |
![]() ![]() |
0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 209.84 |
![]() |
0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 262.3 |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 183.61 |
Spell Power ≥ Haste Rating
Any increase in Spell Power increases the damage all your spells do. For
the Arcane spec both your main nukes Arcane Blast and
Arcane Missiles gain a Spell Power bonus from
Arcane Empowerment.
How a spell scales off Spell Power depends on the cast time. The rule of
thumb is that the faster a spell is cast, the less it benefits from Spell Power,
whilst slow casts benefit more from it.
At Level 80, a Mage needs 32.79 haste rating for 1% increased casting speed.
The reason why Haste is so valuable is that it helps to boost instant-cast
spells such as Arcane Explosion more than the Spell power stat, as you
can simply cast Arcane Explosion more often rather than slightly empowering it.
Critical Strike rating
The value of Crit rating is an often hotly-discussed topic. At Level 80
45.91 Critical Strike rating is needed to get a 1% higher crit chance.
While crits produce effectively free (in terms of no additional Mana
cost compared to Haste) damage, the Critical Strike bonus is not as high
as the extra bonus from Haste and you need more rating for a 1%
increase. However, Arcane Missiles gets its Critical Strike damage
bonus increased by 25% from
Glyph of Arcane Missiles,
Spell Power
and
Chaotic Skyflare Diamond and
Blizzard from
Chaotic Skyflare Diamond,
Ice Shards and
Spell Power.
This means that the value of Critical Strike rating also depends on
how you AoE (mainly with Blizzard or mainly with
Arcane Explosion)
and on your Arcane Missiles usage. However, in general, Critical Strike
rating comes out weaker than Haste Rating and therefore is ranked lower.
Spirit
Spirit increases your Mana regeneration and with Arcane Meditation
+
Mage Armor you can have 100% of your out of combat-regeneration
while casting. In Wrath of the Lich King,
Molten Armor also turns 35% of
your total Spirit into Critical Strike rating. This effect can be increased
by 20% with
Glyph of Molten Armor and by another 15% with the 2-set bonus
of the Tier 9 set later in the expansion. It does not matter if in longer fights with
no downtimes, where the Mana regeneration from
Mage Armor and
Arcane Meditation can restore significant amounts of Mana, or if in
shorter fights where the Critical Strike rating bonus from
Molten Armor
comes out on top, Spirit is a decent passive stat.
While in TBC Spirit massively boosted a Druid's
Innervate, the Mana restored from Innervate is now based on the Druid's
base Mana, and Spirit also does nothing for your
Evocation.
Intellect
Intellect increases your Mana pool even further with the
Arcane Mind talent, which is important as Arcane spells burn Mana
very fast, and gives you Spell power with the
Mind Mastery talent (15%
of your Intellect = Spell Power).
Further,
Evocation restores 60% of your maximum Mana, and having a bigger
Mana pool also means that you restore more Mana. The same rule applies to
Mana Tide Totem of Restoration Shamans, which
you may get if your healers are good on Mana.
The Arcane Mind talent also makes Intellect stronger through the
increased
Critical Strike gained from Intellect. At Level 80, you need 166.667 Intellect
for 1% Critical Strike chance. Paired with
Blessing of Kings
(BoK) for any Mage race, and
Expansive Mind for Gnomes, the amount of
Intellect needed for a 1% increased Critical Strike goes down.
This all sounds very good, but with increased Mana regeneration effects,
such as Replenishment, the lower cooldown on
Evocation, and
the decreased scaling from
Mind Mastery, Intellect just has less value
than it had in The Burning Crusade.
Stamina
1 Stamina increases your Health by 10, which makes you more likely to survive, if you get damaged. The rule is simple: Stamina is no stat you should actively gear for, but it never hurts to have some. Arcane Mages typically have enough Stamina on their gear anyways.
MP5 — Mana per 5 Seconds
This stat regenerates a fixed amount of Mana every 5 seconds. As Arcane Mages are always hungry for more Mana, this stat is not bad, but since it is rare to get without dropping more important stats, it is rather insignificant.
Changelog
- 06 Jan. 2023: Added link to the Mage Sim guide.
- 06 Oct. 2022: Fixed hit tables not displaying information depending on spec.
- 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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