Season of Discovery Arcane Mage Healer Talents and Runes

As the current maximum level in Phase 3 is 50, you will be able to have a fleshed out talent build missing only 10 talents when compared to the end game 60 builds.

Mages heal by dealing damage, which is converted to healing with the new Temporal Beacon mechanic. This can placed on a target with Regeneration or on many targets with Mass Regeneration.

As the healing is not split, you can ramp up for big raid damage events by setting up multiple beacons and then using your damage cooldowns, or stay Mana conservative by having only a few beacons out on important targets such as the tank instead.

While the Arcane tree is very straightforward, as there are not many useful damage-increasing talents, a significant adjustment you can do to our proposed talents above is dropping Magic Attunement and some points of Arcane Focus in order to pick up Improved Arcane Missiles. While this will generally not be needed with the new Missile Barrage Rune, getting even a single pushback and losing Missiles as a result can be extremely punishing in some encounters.

Points into Wand Specialization should no longer be needed now that there are more Mana-conscious options to spend Arcane Blast charges on at high stacks.

Finally, due to the introduction of Balefire Bolt which deals both Arcane and Fire damage, picking up Ignite is not a terrible idea as you will be able to get a little DPS boost out of it.

• Gloves — Arcane Blast
• Pants — Mass Regeneration (Area Healing) or Living Flame (DPS)
• Chest — Regeneration (ST Healing) or Burnout (DPS)
• Waist — Missile Barrage
• Feet — Chronostatic Preservation (Burst ST Healing) or Spell Power (DPS / AoE Healing)
• Head — Temporal Anomaly
• Wrist — Balefire Bolt

The great thing about Mage Healer is that you can swap between healer and DPS by just changing your runes; taking the Regeneration is enough to get a lot of focused healing done into your Temporal Beacon target while still doing a lot of damage!

Your area healing will be much better if you also take Mass Regeneration, and Chronostatic Preservation is a huge single target heal once charged, but neither is strictly necessary for all encounters.

Unfortunately Living Flame and Arcane Explosion convert 80% less healing than single target damage spells to your Temporal Beacons, making Living Flame more of a pure DPS option.

Temporal Anomaly can provide some Temporal Beacon-independent shielding ahead of dangerous raid damage mechanics. Balefire Bolt deals a lot of damage, which converts to healing, and is a great way to spend Arcane Blast stacks, especially if Missile Barrage is refusing to proc.

More Engravings are likely to come out as we reach higher level caps, so make sure to keep a tab on our general Mage Rune guide below to learn what they do, and where to find them:

The Arcane tree is full of utility goodies for Mages, including very powerful damage boosting talents at the end of the tree.

Arcane Focus gives you 10% free Spell Hit for Arcane spells, which is a simple, but very powerful bonus!

Wand Specialization is a decent damage and healing increase as Arcane damage wands, such as Greater Magic Wand, are now allowed to contribute towards Temporal Beacon healing.

Improved Arcane Missiles gives you up to 100% less cast time delay from damage on Arcane Missiles. Strong whenever you are being focused, but also a weak use of points if you are not the main focus target for enemies.

Arcane Concentration allows Clearcasting to happen after 10% of your casts, which saves a ton of Mana over time and allows gameplay such as using weaker, cheaper spells to proc it, followed by your strongest, most expensive spell. For now this does not work with healing runes such as Mass Regeneration, but that is something likely to be changed in the future so keep an eye out!

Presence of Mind makes your next spell be instantly cast, but only once every 3-minutes. This can be used to deal burst damage with Arcane Blast and other longer cast time spells, or to instantly crowd control an enemy with Polymorph, for example.

Arcane Power increases your damage by 30% but makes them also cost 30% more Mana, and only lasts 15 seconds, with a 3-minute cooldown. This is a very powerful boost to your damage and converted healing.

The fire tree is not too interesting, but Ignite is still worth picking for extra DPS with Balefire Bolt.

Ignite allows your critical strikes to create a damage over time effect on the target for 40% extra damage over 4 seconds. This damage over time effect has its duration reset and grows for each additional critical strike landed while it is active.