Arcane Mage DPS Guide — Dragonflight 10.0.7

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.

Arcane Mages have not received any changes in Patch 10.0.7. However, the new Primordial Gems system does impact Arcane Mages. See our Enchants and Gems page for more info on this.

Patch 10.0, also called the pre-patch for Dragonflight, contains a large number of changes for Arcane Mages. There is the new talent system, which comes with a lot of new spells and passives for Arcane Mages. Below we have listed some of the most important changes:

• Arcane Surge is a new spell replacing Arcane Power that will expend all your Mana to do a significant amount of damage, after which it will increase your damage and Mana Regen.
• Arcane Mages can pick up a lot of spells that let you cast while moving at the same time, making the spec have very little downtime from movement compared to previously, due to being able to combine talents like Shimmer, Foresight and Slipstream.
• A lot of previous borrowed power effects are coming back as talents, combining the playstyles of multiple previous expansions into one.

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.

Arcane is currently looking to be the best raiding and Mythic+ spec out of the Mage specs. It has very strong AoE and single target, while having all of the utility of the other specs as well. Addiitonally, it has very strong burst and can do good cleave damage while focusing on single target damage, compared to the other Mage specs. The only downside is that Arcane is often considered a bit harder to play than the other Mage specs, making it more difficult to reach this advantage over the other specs if you are not comfortable with the spec.