Arcane Mage DPS Guide — Season 4

The Arcane specialization is very singular in the current state of World of Warcraft. The core gameplay revolves around Mana expenditure, presenting the player with two distinct "phases" of the rotation; "Burn" and "Conserve." During the "Conserve" phase, the player aims to remain Mana neutral until the Evocation cooldown is available. During the "Burn" phase, the player expends all their available Mana while their cooldowns are active, restoring their Mana to full with Evocation when they run dry and re-entering the "Conserve" phase. This dichotomy offers the player a unique experience that is both challenging and rewarding.

Strengths

• Very high burst damage.
• Able to move around quickly.
• Good at avoiding or reducing damage taken.
• Gains bonus single target damage from additional targets (funnel)
• Able to do a lot of its damage while on the move

Weaknesses

• Reliant on cooldowns for single-target damage.
• Best builds require good encounter knowledge to be able to be played well.

Arcane Mage got no changes to the spec itself. However, with the new Season, the available gear has significantly changed, as there is a new pool of Mythic+ dungeons, the new Antique Bronze Bullion system, and loot from all 3 of the Dragonflight Raids. We updated our best in slot lists and added a new section to the gear page on how to spend your Bullions.

If you want to play an Arcane Mage but currently do not have one at max level, you can check out our leveling guide for tips on your journey.

Once you reach the max level, it can be somewhat overwhelming to completely change the way you play by suddenly implementing a large number of addons in a short space of time, especially if they have a heavy visual impact on your UI. We recommend using some of the more basic addons recommended on our Addons page below while leveling so that you have more time to get used to them during the easier phases of playing your class.

Arcane Mage is all about maximizing the damage you can do per point of Mana. Most of your damage will be done in a phase we will refer to as the "Burn." phase, during which you will quickly burn through all your Mana, doing very high damage. Outside of this burn phase, you will be in your "Conserve" phase, during which you are doing a bit lower damage, waiting for your cooldowns to become available again.

Most of your time will be spent casting Arcane Blast as this is your main Mana expenditure spell. Additionally, Arcane uses various cooldowns, like Arcane Surge to boost the damage you do while burning through your Mana. The main way for Arcane to regenerate Mana will be via Evocation. Conserve phases are made possible via Arcane Barrage as this allows you to drop your Arcane Charges to reduce the Mana cost of your spells.

If you are a beginner to the spec and would like to learn the basic fundamentals of the class, or would like to learn some of the oddities of some of the Arcane spells, we recommend looking through the Spell Summary first, as well as the Easy Mode page linked below.

If you are already somewhat familiar with Arcane Mages, you can head straight to the Talents and Rotation pages to jump right into the more complex, detailed information.

We have a dedicated page that goes over all the intricacies of gearing an Arcane Mage in the current patch, including the Best in Slot gear from the current tier.

After you have obtained some gear via the gearing guide above, you will want to make sure you are using the correct consumables, gems, enchants, and more. To help you with this process, we have a page on exactly this. Additionally, we have a stats page that goes over the stat priority and necessary changes that might occur from changing stat priorities.

Since the launch of the Dragonflight pre-patch (10.0), all classes have access to the newly revamped Talent system. For the most common and strongest builds, we strongly suggest checking out the talent page.

Starting as an Arcane Mage is very different from end-game progression content. Because of this, we have dedicated pages that guide you on how to play optimally in Mythic+ and PvP. We will also give raiding tips closer to the release of the first raid.

If you feel like you are making mistakes or are not sure what to improve on, you can check out the pages below for tips and answers to questions you might have.

All 3 Mage specs are looking relatively close to each other in strength for Season 4, based on limited PTR and simulation data. Arcane still has its incredibly relevant kit for raid bosses, where it has very high burst, with not just free AoE damage, but increased single target damage.

However, since there was limited balancing going on for the Season 4 PTR, it is likely that there will be class tuning happening early on in the Season, so keep that in mind.

In a Raiding setting, Arcane is a looking to be a strong Mage specialization. If you want to be fully optimal, you will want to play all 3 specs, especially with 3 different raids and thus many different bosses. Compared to other classes, Arcane is looking to be somewhere in the middle of the pack, however, the top specs are looking to significantly outperform any of the Mage specs. Having said that, it is likely that there will be class tuning early on in the Season.

In a Mythic+ setting, Arcane is quite strong; however, it "suffers" from the fact that Fire is even better, generally making it less sought after as Fire is arguably the best pure ranged DPS in the game. However, Arcane can still complete practically any key level, and, on lower keys, is actually better than the other Mage specs due to its extremely high burst lasting the entirety of encounters.