Arcane Mage DPS Mythic+ Tips — Dragonflight 10.0.7
In this guide, you will find tips and advice to tackle Mythic+ dungeons with your Arcane Mage in World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.0.7.
Arcane Mage in Mythic+
Arcane has very potent AoE damage and very potent priority damage. Arcane only has 2 downsides in Mythic+, which is that it has to give up some single target damage for its best AoE build, and that for its AoE damage it has to be in melee range, which as a caster can be quite dangerous.
If you are unfamiliar with Mythic+ and its associated general mechanics, you can read more about it on our Dragonflight Mythic+ Season 1 page below.
Arcane Mage Mythic+ Rotation
Although the base rotations outlined in the standard rotation page still apply to Mythic+, Mythic+ usually has different types of damage requirements than raids do. If you are unsure about the standard rotations of Arcane, check out our rotation page below.
One of the biggest rotational changes is how you should look at your burn
and conserve phases. Since there is generally a bit of downtime in Mythic+, for
example, due to moving to the next pack of mobs, or the healer having to drink,
you can be more aggressive with your Mana. Especially if you are running
Shimmer, when a pack is about to die, you can quickly use both charges
to move ahead to the next pack, and then get a couple of seconds of drinking in
to regain Mana. In practice, this means you can spend almost every trash pack
purely using the Mana aggressive rotation of 4x
Arcane Explosion ->
Arcane Barrage, even if
Evocation is not soon ready, as long
as you know that there is a bit of downtime after the current pack.
Opening on Packs
The AoE Burn Phase outlined on our rotation page
is also the way you should open up on any new packs.
The only small difference is that you should use Evocation in-between
packs as to avoid wasting time on it while you are in combat.
Optimizing Movement and downtime in Mythic+
One of the most important parts of your damage in Mythic+ will come from how efficiently you move between packs and how you use the downtime between packs. Below we have some tips on how to manage this.
- Make sure you start the run with plenty of water (100+ usages)
- Try to fit in as many drinks of water as possible without falling behind.
The easiest way to do this is to already
Blink or
Shimmer ahead right before a pack dies. You can then usually get 2 or 3 seconds of drinking in, even if your group is chain-pulling. Getting in frequent 2 or 3 seconds of drinking is a big damage gain as it means you do not have to spend any time conserving Mana while actually in combat. Do not underestimate how much Mana you can get back across a run even with just a couple of seconds of drinking between every pull.
- Avoid using
Evocation in combat whenever possible. On boss fights, using Evocation is fine, but outside of boss fights, you should always try to fit Evocation in in-between packs. Make sure to use
Shimmer or
Slipstream to follow your group toward the next pack while casting Evocation.
Arcane Mage Utility
The main reason to bring an Arcane Mage to a Mythic+ group is for its damage, but aside from that, it also has some very valuable utility which makes every Mythic+ group wants at least one Mage, especially since Dragonflight, where Arcane Mages can get a lot of crowd control in their talents:
Arcane Intellect is a big boost for both the other caster DPS in the group, as well as additional healing for the healer.
Time Warp is a required cooldown for any Mythic+ group.
Remove Curse can be useful to dispel Curses in some dungeons.
- An Arcane Mage can add a lot of crowd control in the form of
Dragon's Breath,
Polymorph,
Blast Wave,
Ice Nova,
Ring of Frost, or even
Mass Slow.
Spellsteal can be useful in some dungeons to remove dangerous buffs from enemy targets. Sometimes it can also be used as a big DPS boost for the Arcane Mage by Spellstealing beneficial buffs that increase your damage.
Mythic+ Talents for Arcane Mage
Below are the suggested talents for Mythic+. There are a couple of choices you can make with the talents, which are discussed below. If you are interested in talents for raiding or other PvE scenarios, check out our generic talents page.
These are our suggested talents for Mythic+.
You can easily import the talent tree below via the "copy export string" button.
There are a couple of options when it comes to setting up your talent tree for Mythic+. Below we will go over some of the changes you could make to the above tree.
Class Talent Tree Options
- Replace
Temporal Warp for
Time Anomaly if you do not use expect to use
Time Warp until very late into the dungeon.
- Replace
Remove Curse for any defensive talent of your choice when there are no Curses to dispel in the dungeon you plan to do, or if someone else will handle the dispelling.
- Replace
Spellsteal for any defensive talent of your choice when there are no buffs worth dispelling in the dungeon you plan to do.
- Replace
Ring of Frost and/or
Ice Nova for any defensive talent of your choice if you do not need the extra crowd control.
- Replace
Dragon's Breath and/or
Blast Wave for any defensive talent of your choosing. Both function as AoE interrupts so we generally suggest not removing these unless you are 100% certain all interrupts will be handled without you.
Arcane Mage Talent Tree Options
- Replace
Charged Orb for one point in
Impetus if you want to focus on more boss damage at the cost of AoE damage.
- Change from the
Mana Gem build to the
Arcane Harmony build if you want to focus on more priority damage at the cost of overall damage. (Replace
Mana Gem,
Enlightened and
Prodigious Savant for
Illuminated Thoughts,
Concentration and
Arcane Harmony)
Dragonflight Season 1 Affix: Thundering
Occasionally you will get buffed for 30% damage for 15 seconds. You need to
run into someone with the opposite polarity buff that you have before those 15
seconds are up or else you will get stunned and receive a big damage-over-time (DoT)
effect on you. You can use Ice Block to break the stun and remove the DoT.
Whoever you did not run into, however, is unlikely to have a stun break. Generally,
it is recommended to not wait too long to clear the buff as it can become
very risky to get rid of it last second, depending on the dungeon and affixes.
For a more detailed explanation, see below:
Trinket Considerations for Arcane Mage in Mythic+
When choosing your trinkets, we recommend simulating yourself on Raidbots using the Patchwerk option for raids and single-target, and selecting multiple boss targets for simulating Mythic+ or add target fights. Usually, we recommend using trinkets that proc stats, rather than single-target damage dealers for Mythic+.
You can also get a quick overview of good Mythic+ Trinkets on our Gearing page, specifically the Simulation chart for multi-target scenarios.
Mythic+ Tier List
For an opinion list of how Arcane fares against other DPS specs in Mythic+, please see our Tier List page:
Changelog
- 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7 and provided some small phrasing tweaks.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 16 Jan. 2022: Updated suggested talents to Mana Gem build and some minor tip changes.
- 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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