Arcane Mage Best Legendaries in Shadowlands — Shadowlands 9.0.2

By doing Torghast, you can craft legendary items through the new Runecarving system. Many of these powers are large DPS boosts, or contain strong defensive effects. However, you are only able to wear one of these at a time, and you are gated in how many you can craft over time, so it is important to know which legendary to use in which situation. Below, we go over the best legendary effects for each situation.

Focus	Legendary	Slots	Source
Raiding	Temporal Warp	Chest or Ring	Torghast (The Upper Reaches, Layer 3+)
Mythic+	Arcane Bombardment	Feet or Back	Torghast (Skoldus Hall, Layer 3+)
Torghast	Grisly Icicle	Shoulder or Head	Honor PvP Vendor

For more information regarding the best legendary for each situation, see below. If a legendary effect is not listed, you can assume it is worse than all other options that are listed.

There is no Legendary for Arcane which is best or almost best in all situations. The closest option to this is Arcane Bombardment, which is a couple of % (1-3%) behind the best single target option, but has no restrictions (like Temporal Warp), and is the best Legendary for any cleave/AoE situation.

Raiding usually has tight DPS checks, usually single target focused. The best option for this is generally Temporal Warp. However, Temporal Warp is not useful if your group uses Time Warp late into a fight, as it makes it hard to fit in multiple Time Warp usages. If you can not get maximum usage out of Temporal Warp, Arcane Harmony is the suggested option for single target, or Arcane Bombardment on fights with cleave or where execute DPS is important.

Worth noting when using Temporal Warp: Time Warp can be used during Bloodlust (or similar effects) to stack both effects at the same time.

Triune Ward is a defensive alternative, which can boost your survivability significantly. This is only an option when DPS is not a relevant requirement but you feel you really need more survivability.

Mythic+ tends to have more AoE damage requirements than raiding, which Arcane Bombardment is the best option for, while remaining relatively competitive on single target.

The only real DPS alternative is Temporal Warp, which can be useful if you need high burst damage on a specific pack or boss that comes after when your group uses Time Warp.

The final alternative legendary option is Triune Ward, which can boost your survivability significantly. This is only an option when DPS is not a relevant requirement, but you feel you really need more survivability. Especially in very high keys, you can get 1-shot by some mechanics, where Triune Ward can help you survive these 1-shots.

Grisly Icicle is a great option when soloing Torghast, as the enemies will remain frozen for the entire duration of Frost Nova even when you are DPSing them, making it very easy to kite enemies and still do damage to them. When doing Torghast as a group, this effect is mostly useless because your group will break your freezes instantly, in which case Arcane Bombardment is the best overall option.

If you need extra survivability against ranged/caster enemies, Triune Ward is a great choice.

Generally speaking, you will want to craft legendaries for slots with the highest "stat budget", to maximize the stats you get from legendaries reaching the highest item level available. Below we have listed the items in order of stat budget:

1. Helm, Chest, Legs
2. Gloves, Belt, Boots, Shoulders
3. Cloak, Bracers
4. Neck, Rings

For people that actively clear Raiding, there are some situations where you might not want to do this. Since the last 2 bosses in Raiding drop higher item level loot, you will want to avoid crafting items for the slots dropped by these bosses. These slots are:

• Back
• Chest
• Shoulder

The last 2 bosses also drop a Ring and Trinkets, but this is not relevant for legendary crafting, as you have 2 ring slots, and there are no legendaries for the Trinket slots.

This leads us to the following list of legendaries and what slot to craft them in:

• Arcane Bombardment: Boots
• Temporal Warp: Ring
• Grisly Icicle: Head
• Triune Ward: Neck