Arcane Mage DPS Guide — The War Within Pre-Patch

Arcane Mage has received a rework in The War Within, with a complete spec talent tree rework and some changes to the base talent tree. Below we will first go into the changes in the Mage talent tree, before diving deeper into the changes in the Arcane tree.

The Mage tree did not receive a lot of changes, but it did receive some important ones to hotly debated talents. Below we list the most import changes:

• Temporal Warp has been removed, which was a highly divisive node, with some players loving it and some hating it. It was replaced for a passive 3% Intellect choice node against Time Anomaly.
• Ring of Frost and Ice Nova have been turned into a choice node, reducing the total amount of crowd-control available by a little bit, although neither were picked very often in PvE.
• Supernova has been moved from the Arcane tree to the class tree, and put into a choice node with Dragon's Breath. This new choice node is in a very central place in the tree, so it is easy to pick up.

In contrast to the Mage tree, the Arcane tree got completely reworked. Many nodes have been replaced, changed, combined, or split into multiple, and the location of almost every single node is different. Although many of these changes did not significantly change the playstyle, a few of these changes have a large impact on how you play.

Overall, Arcane has been reduced in complexity, which in recent years has arguably become both very complex and very scripted. At the highest level of play, people were using macros and WeakAuras that would interact with the game's core underlying systems like spellqueueing and server ticks in very unintuitive ways, or even intentionally causing the game client to freeze, to squeeze out the most amount of damage. A large factor for this was Radiant Spark, which is being completely removed. However, various other talents are also being removed or changed to reduce some complexity.

See below a list of the most important changes. The full, exhaustive list of changes can be found in the Class Changes page linked further below.

• The entire talent tree has been reworked, with almost all talents being in a different position.
• Radiant Spark and its related Harmonic Echo have been removed. Due to how core this was to the rotation, this significantly alters the playstyle, making the rotation less scripted and generally considered less complex.
• Conjure Mana Gem and its related Cascading Power have been removed.
• Foresight was removed.
• A new choice node, with Magi's Spark and Improved Touch of the Magi has been added:
  • Magi's Spark at first glance is a node similar to Radiant Spark, but in practice is quite different. Unlike Radiant Spark, it is less strict in the order of spells you need to cast, just that you need to cast specific spells in the Touch of the Magi window, for an additional explosion at the end.
  • Improved Touch of the Magi is simply a direct buff to Touch of the Magi.
• Nether Munitions is a new talent which causes all enemies hit by Magi's Spark or Improved Touch of the Magi to take more damage from you.
• Arcane Familiar has been changed to no longer be a separate spell, but instead it will be summoned upon casting Arcane Intellect.
• Energized Familiar buffs your Arcane Familiar to fire more bolts during Arcane Surge, and also sometimes gives you a small amount of mana.
• Arcane Surge now also provides you with a stack of Clearcasting.
• Surging Urge is a new talent that makes your Arcane Surge do more damage based on the amount of Arcane Charges you have.
• Eureka is a new talent that makes Arcane Missiles or Arcane Explosion do more damage when they consume Clearcasting.
• Aether Attunement is a new talent that significantly increases Arcane Missiles and turns it into an AoE ability, after consuming Clearcasting 3 times.
• Arcane Debilitation is a new talent, which applies a stacking debuff on your target that increases the damage you do with Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles and Arcane Barrage for each time you have hit the target with Arcane Missiles. This lasts a couple of seconds and each stack expires independently, meaning you cannot indefinitely keep increasing the stacks.
• Time Loop gives Arcane Debilitation a 10% chance to apply another stack. This effect, in turn, can proc itself, meaning that theoretically, a single application could cause a chain of procs.
• Leysight is a new talent that increases Nether Precision's damage increase.
• Leydrinker is a new talent that causes Nether Precision a small chance to cause your next Arcane Blast or Arcane Barrage to echo for a portion of its damage.

On top of the relatively large changes in the Arcane tree, the Hero Talent Tree system also has a significant impact on the spec. However, the Hero Talent Tree system is not yet available during the pre-patch, so these will not be relevant until the expansion fully launches.