Arcane Mage DPS Easy Mode — The War Within Pre-Patch
On this page, we explain how to easily play Arcane Mage in World of Warcraft — The War Within Pre-Patch, using the simplest rotation, talent tree, stat priority, gear setup, etc., without sacrificing performance.
This section is intended for players who are new to the game or class, have no intentions of raiding Mythic difficulty, or simply want a more straightforward way to play their specialization without being overwhelmed by the numerous priorities and active abilities that need to be taken into consideration for optimal play.
The Basics for Arcane Mage
Arcane is a great Swiss Army Knife that has a complete toolkit to approach any situation. It provides great burst as well as impressive AoE. It is also hypermobile and comes equipped with a variety of defensive spells and cooldowns. In this section, we will be focusing on a setup that minimizes the number of buttons and reactivity necessary without unduly compromising overall damage output.
If you are completely new to Arcane and need more information on the abilities available to you, you can check out our Spell Summary page.
Beginner's Guide to Arcane Mage in The War Within
Beginner Single-Target Talents for Arcane Mage
This build is a great starting point for pure single-target situations.
Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Beginner AoE Talents for Arcane Mage
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.
Beginner Cleave Talents for Arcane Mage
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.
Beginner Arcane Mage DPS Rotation
Our goal is to use our strong DPS cooldowns, 
Evocation +
Arcane Surge + 
Touch of the Magi as much as possible.
Outside of maximizing these cooldowns, we want to cast as many 
Arcane Blasts
on 4 Arcane Charges as possible. Below we go over how we achieve this:
- Cast
Evocation when it is available, for the large Intellect buff; - Cast
Arcane Surge when it is available. This should be right after Evocation; - Cast
Touch of the Magi when it is available. Make sure every second usage is used during Arcane Surge; - Cast
Arcane Orb when available and you do not have 4 Arcane Charges; - Cast
Shifting Power when available and Arcane Surge is not active; - When you have
Nether Precision, cast 
Arcane Blast.
- Cast
Arcane Missiles when 
Clearcasting is up. - If the target is below 35% health, cast
Arcane Barrage as your filler. - Cast Arcane Barrage when you have 4 Arcane Charges, and you are below
70% mana. If Evocation comes up soon, you can go lower than 70% mana as
you will soon regain all of your mana;
- Cast Arcane Blast as your filler if the target is above 35% health.
In AoE situations, you replace Arcane Blast for 
Arcane Explosion as your filler.
Keep in mind, that this is a simplified rotation. If you want to learn how to get the most of your character, check out our full rotation page below.
Best Talents And Rotation for Arcane Mage in The War Within
This is the Easy Mode page which presents things in a simplified manner with simplified builds. For our detailed, fully-fledged Talent and Rotation guides, click below!
Gearing an Arcane Mage
Stat Choice for Arcane Mage
You will want to prioritize secondary stats as follows:
- Intellect;
- Critical Strike;
- Mastery;
- Haste;
- Versatility.
We recommend you prioritize item levels over specific stats, as they are all very close in value.
While the stat priority for classes is normally the same for both the Easy Mode page and our full guide, subtle differences can still occur. If you want to see the full explanation of the stat priority, as well as the absolute top choices for the priority, head to our full stats page below.
If you are interested in finding out about the specific best-in-slot items from the current tier, or want more information on how to gear, we suggest reading the full gearing page below.
Changelog
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Season 4.
- 19 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Updated rotation to be easier and slightly more DPS.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated talents and rotation for 10.2 changes.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated Rotation and Talents for the Arcane rework for 10.1.5
- 01 May 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 24 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Mage Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Dutchmagoz. Dutchmagoz is a Mythic raider in one of the top raiding guilds, Turtles and the owner of the Mage Discord server, Altered Time, where he is involved in all things Mage, and you can reach out to him directly for feedback or questions about the guide.
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