World of Warcraft: Forever Arcane Mage Guide

Arcane Mage is in an interesting position when it comes to Class Balance. The highlight of the class is that once you hit level 34, your mana management is absolutely insane with Arcane Meditation giving 50% Mana regen and Mage Armor randomly getting buffed to 50% as well giving Mage a total of 100% Mana regeneration in combat. With the addition of Arcane Wrath and Precision now applying to ALL spells, we are able to invest talent points into new areas. With those talent points we are able to spec into the Fire subspec while still retaining our original Arcane spells. In addition, the Enchant Weapon - Revelation fundamentally changes how the class is played in both single and multi-target situations. For example: Normally Flamestrike is almost never worth using as it doesn't benefit from Arcane Mind's 100% Critical Strike Damage bonus of Arcane Spells. With the revelation enchant, EVERY single tick on EVERY single mob has a chance to proc the enchant. Meaning that nearly every single GCD is guaranteed to crit if you have enough mobs in the flamestrike AOE. Besides this interaction, Arcane feels extremely well balanced and will perform very well in raids, group content, and leveling alike.

Arcane feels really interesting to play after the changes. For competative DPS, you are forced to play a Fire subspec which kind of betrays the Arcane fantasy to begin with. Arcane "Fire" has to juggle multiple spells as a soft rotation. You have to use Fire Blast, Arcane Wrath, and Pyroblast when you gain 3 stacks of Heating Up. You also need to maintain Arcane Blast every 18 seconds and then manage using Arcane Missiles when Missile Barrage is up. This feels like praying for good RNG rather than an actual rotation. Adding in more options inside the actual Arcane tree instead of forcing you to become an Elementalist Spec would help to make this Specialization feel Unique rather than just buffing the other schools of magic. One example would be like how the Frost tree implemented Cone of Cold into their single target rotation or potentially adding an interaction where Arcane Wrath adds a DoT which is maintained by Arcane spells.

One of the most convenient parts of being a Mage is the amount of built in Utility the Class has. Let's take Conjure Water for example: Rank 1 of Conjure Water is trained at Level 4 and conjures Level 1 water. Rank 2 of Conjure Water is trained at Level 10 and conjures Level 5 water. Rank 3 of Conjure Water is trained at Level 20 and conjures Level 15 water. Rank 4 of Conjure Water is trained at Level 30 and conjures Level 25 water. Rank 5 of Conjure Water is trained at Level 40 and conjures Level 35 water. Rank 6 of Conjure Water is trained at Level 50 and conjures Level 45 water. Rank 7 of Conjure Water is trained at Level 60 and conjures Level 55 water. Reminder: When each new rank is trained, you start by conjuring only 2 water increased by 2 every level until a full stack of 20 is produced. Rank 7 Conjure Water has been updated to produce 10 water per cast.

Another useful Utility Mage possesses is the Conjure Mana Agate ability among other Mana Gems. for example: Conjure Mana Agate is trained at Level 28 and conjures a Mana Agate that restores 375 to 425 Mana. Conjure Mana Jade is trained at Level 38 and conjures a Mana Jade that restores 550 to 650 Mana. Conjure Mana Citrine is trained at Level 48 and conjures a Mana Citrine that restores 775 to 925 Mana. Conjure Mana Ruby is trained at Level 58 and conjures a Mana Ruby that restores 1,000 to 1,200 Mana.

Perhaps the most Iconic ability in all of World of Warcraft are portals such as Portal: Stormwind or Portal: Orgrimmar.

At Level 20 every mage learns their two Mage Trainer accessible teleports depending on their Faction: Alliance: Teleport: Stormwind and Teleport: Ironforge Horde: Teleport: Orgrimmar and Teleport: Undercity At Level 30 every mage learns the non-Mage Trainer accessible teleport depending on their Faction: Alliance: Teleport: Darnassus Horde: Teleport: Thunder Bluff At Level 40 every mage learns their three Mage Portals at their Cities Respective Portal Trainers: Alliance: Portal: Stormwind, Portal: Ironforge, Portal: Darnassus Horde: Portal: Orgrimmar, Portal: Undercity, Portal: Thunder Bluff.