Arcane Mage DPS Easy Mode — The War Within (11.1.5)

This build is a great starting point for pure single-target situations.

Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!

The tree below is a tree focused on doing cleave and AoE damage.

You can easily import the talent tree below into the game by using the "copy export string" button below.

The build below is perfect for fights where you want to primarily focus on single-target damage but has occasional secondary targets you also want to hit. For true AoE situations, this build is worse than the pure AoE build, but for raid bosses with occasional adds, this is the perfect build.

You can easily import the talent tree below into the game by using the "copy export string" button below.

Arcane is largely focused around a couple of key concepts:

• Use cooldowns quickly. This is important for almost all specs in the game, but Arcane really suffers when you sit on your cooldowns for a long time. Not only are you losing damage from not gaining the damage benefits from your cooldowns like Arcane Surge, but your mana generation is directly tied to your cooldowns, further lowering your damage and making it much harder to remain at 4 Arcane Charges.
• Staying at 4 Arcane Charges as long as possible to cast hard hitting Arcane Blasts and Arcane Barrages, while ensuring you do not run out of mana until Evocation is back up. This moves us onto the next point:
• Using Arcane Barrage as much as possible when it does more damage or you can immediately gain Arcane Charges back, to avoid going out of mana while still keeping up high damage abilities, while avoiding low damage Arcane Barrages.

This leads us to the following basic rotation:

• Cast Evocation into Arcane Surge into Touch of the Magi when all 3 are ready.
• If only Touch of the Magi is ready, but not the other 2, cast Touch of the Magi. You can do this once in-between each Evocation + Arcane Surge usage.
• Cast Arcane Missiles when you have Clearcasting and you do not have Nether Precision.
• Cast Arcane Barrage in any of the following scenarios:
  • You have Intuition.
  • You have 18 stacks of Arcane Harmony.
  • You have Arcane Orb ready.
  • You are out of mana.
• Cast Arcane Blast as your filler. On multiple targets, cast Arcane Explosion as your filler until 3 Arcane Charges, then Arcane Blast.

Keep in mind that this is a simplified rotation. If you want to learn how to get the most out of your character, check out our full rotation page below.