Arcane Mage Best Legendaries in Shadowlands — Dragonflight 10.2.5

Last updated on Jan 15, 2024 at 15:00 by Dutchmagoz 52 comments
General Information

Legendary Powers are targetable, unique effects that you can imbue certain base items with through the Runecarving system. In Shadowlands, these enable you to customize your Arcane Mage, drastically improving your performance, and are arguably the most important aspect of your gear.

The purpose of this page is to help you pick the right legendary powers (and item slots for them) for your character, depending on the content you are interested in.

1.

Introduction: Legendaries in Shadowlands

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.

2.

Unity Legendary

With 9.2, a new Legendary was added, Unity Icon Unity. This Legendary can be equipped alongside any other Legendary, allowing you to equip 2 Legendaries at once. You must wear Unity Icon Unity to be able to use two Legendaries.

The additional Legendary power will always be your Covenant specific Legendary. So in the case of Kyrian Arcane Mages, this will always be Harmonic Echo Icon Harmonic Echo.

  • Kyrian Harmonic Echo Icon Harmonic Echo: Damage dealt to enemies affected by Radiant Spark Icon Radiant Spark will echo 30% of its damage to nearby targets and to the primary Radiant Spark target.
  • Venthyr Sinful Delight Icon Sinful Delight: Consuming Clearcasting Icon Clearcasting reduces the cooldown of Mirrors of Torment Icon Mirrors of Torment by 4 seconds. If Mirrors of Torment is dispelled, the cooldown is reduced by 45 seconds.
  • Night Fae Heart of the Fae Icon Heart of the Fae: Shifting Power Icon Shifting Power can be channeled while moving. Each enemy hit by Shifting Power grants you 1% Critical Strike and Haste, capped to 10%, lasting 15 seconds. Keep in mind, this effect does nothing if you are not hitting any targets with Shifting Power.
  • Necrolord Death's Fathom Icon Death's Fathom: Your Arcane Blast Icon Arcane Blast has a chance to grant Deathborne Icon Deathborne for 8 seconds, giving 15% bonus spell damage and causing Arcane Blast to hit 2 additional targets. While in the Deathborne form, the bonus damage from Deathborn goes up by 1% for each enemy hit by Arcane Blast.
3.

Best Legendaries for Arcane Mage

Focus Legendary Slots Source
Raiding Arcane Harmony Icon Arcane Harmony (if Kyrian) / otherwise Temporal Warp Icon Temporal Warp Shoulders or Hands / Chest or Ring De Other Side / Torghast (The Upper Reaches, Layer 3+)
Mythic+ Arcane Harmony Icon Arcane Harmony (if Kyrian) / otherwise Arcane Bombardment Icon Arcane Bombardment Shoulders or Hands / Feet or Back De Other Side / Torghast (Skoldus Halls, Layer 3+)
Torghast Grisly Icicle Icon Grisly Icicle / Triune Ward Icon Triune Ward Shoulder or Head / Neck or Chest Honor PvP Vendor / Quest: The Great Vault

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.

4.

Best Overall Legendary for Arcane Mage

Disclaimer: All Legendaries that share a name with a talent (e.g. Arcane Harmony Icon Arcane Harmony and Siphon Storm Icon Siphon Storm), should not stack with each other. However, currently some of these effects are bugged and stacking. Blizzard has communicated that these effects should not stack, so although they might currently stack on the test realms, we assume they will not stack when the pre-patch goes live, or will be fixed shortly after.

If you are a Kyrian Mage, Arcane Harmony Icon Arcane Harmony is the best Legendary for all situations. Combine this with Harmonic Echo Icon Harmonic Echo as your second Legendary.

If you are a Venthyr Mage, Siphon Storm Icon Siphon Storm is the best Legendary for all situations. Combine this with Sinful Delight Icon Sinful Delight.

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

5.

Best Raiding Legendaries for Arcane Mage

If you are a Kyrian Mage, Arcane Harmony Icon Arcane Harmony is the best Legendary for all situations.

Otherwise, Raiding usually has tight DPS checks, usually single target focused. The best option for this is generally Temporal Warp Icon Temporal Warp. However, Arcane Bombardment Icon Arcane Bombardment is suggested on fights with cleave or where execute DPS is important.

It is worth noting when using Temporal Warp Icon Temporal Warp that Time Warp Icon Time Warp can be used during Bloodlust Icon Bloodlust (or similar effects) to stack both effects at the same time.

Triune Ward Icon 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.

6.

Best Mythic+ Legendaries for Arcane Mage

If you are a Kyrian Mage, Arcane Harmony Icon Arcane Harmony is the best Legendary for all situations.

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

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

The final alternative Legendary option is Triune Ward Icon 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.

7.

Best Torghast Legendaries for Arcane Mage

Grisly Icicle Icon Grisly Icicle is a great option when soloing Torghast, as the enemies will remain frozen for the entire duration of Frost Nova Icon 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 Icon Arcane Bombardment is the best overall option.

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

8.

What Slot Should Legendaries by Crafted For?

Generally speaking, you will want to craft legendaries for slots with the lowest "stat budget", due to them being lower item level than Fated item level. Below we have listed the items in order of stat budget from low to high:

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

However, due to tier pieces conflicting with these slots, and due to being able to equip 2 Legendaries, the available slots become a lot smaller. Keep in mind, you should never give up a set bonus to be able to equip a Legendary in a "better" slot. It is much better to re-craft a Legendary for a different suboptimal slot and keep your 4 piece bonus than to miss out on 4 piece bonus.

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

  • Unity Icon Unity: Belt
  • Arcane Harmony Icon Arcane Harmony: Gloves
  • Arcane Bombardment Icon Arcane Bombardment: Boots
  • Temporal Warp Icon Temporal Warp: Ring
9.

Changelog

  • 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
  • 24 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
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