Arcane Mage DPS Mythic+ Tips — 12.0.5

Unfortunately, with current tuning, I do not recommend running Sunfury in Mythic+ as the damage is significantly worse than Spellslinger unless you really enjoy the playstyle a lot more than Spellslinger.

This is currently the strongest build for Mythic+. It does both great AoE damage and priority damage.

Depending on the Dungeon, there is a lot of flexibility when it comes to talents. The Mage tree has a lot of utility which can be either very good or completely useless depending on the dungeon, which allows you to switch between those utility spells or defensive talents as needed.

• Swap between Temporal Realignment or Time Walk based on personal preference. Temporal Alignment a very simple passive heal when you get low, while Time Walk is better if you are good at proactively using Alter Time.
• Spec in/out of Mass Invisibility depending on if you need it to skip any packs.
• Spec in/out of Remove Curse depending on if you need to dispell any curses.
• Spec in/out of Spellsteal depending on if you need to remove any enemy buffs.
• Spec in/out of Ice Cold (and the nodes leading to it) depending on if you need the immunity of Ice Block for the dungeon you are doing.
• If you specced out of any of the nodes listed above, you can use the points to spec into one or some of the following:
  • Improved Spellsteal: Useful if you often need to dispell the same target multiple times in a row but do not want to give up too many global cooldowns on it.
  • Improved Remove Curse: Useful if you often need to dispell yourself and someone else at the same time, but no one else. This is generally only recommended if there is a second Curse dispeller in the group. Can be very useful during Xal'atath's Bargain: Devour weeks to quickly dispell yourself and one other person.
  • Freezing Cold: If you need to kite enemy packs.
  • Incantation of Swiftness: For speedrunning content.
  • Master of Escape: Can be combined with Incantation of Swiftness if you need even more movement speed increases or enemy pack skips with full stealth groups.

Counterspell is our go-to interrupt for most situations. Not only does it interrupt a spell, it also locks the enemy out of casting spells of the same school for 7-8 seconds, depending on talents.

To avoid having to switch targets, I highly recommend using either a mouseover or focus target macro. The macros below will kick your focus or mouseover target if you have one, or your current target if you do not.

Supernova and Dragon's Breath are the primary method of AoE interrupting enemies. You can only pick one, and which one you pick depends on the situation. Both of them will usually stop the enemy casts, but unlike Counterspell, it will not stop them from immediately re-casting the same or a different spell.

Generally, Supernova is easier to use since it can be used without being near the enemies, but both are fine choices.

Additionally, Polymorph, Ring of Frost and Mass Polymorph can be used to interrupt enemies as well (if talented), but in most cases the enemies will just immediately start casting again afterwards, so it should only be used as a last ditch effort. Polymorph also has the downside of it healing enemies.

Arcane Intellect provides the whole group with bonus Intellect, increasing the DPS of yourself and other casters, as well as the healing of the healer.

Time Warp is a critical cooldown for any Mythic+ group. Every 10 minutes it allows you to provide a massive haste buff to the group.

Remove Curse can be useful to dispel Curses in some dungeons. It should also be used to dispel Xal'atath's Bargain: Devour if it is an active affix.

Spellsteal can be used to remove magic buffs on enemies and grant them to you instead. Although in many cases, the buffs are not actually granted to you due to balancing reasons, so it is primarily used as an offensive dispel.

Greater Invisibility can be used to completely drop aggro, while additionally it can sometimes completely cancel certain debuffs, targeted casts on you, or cancel various mechanics.

Energized Barriers allows you to remove snare/slow effects. It does this by entirely removing the debuff that causes the slow, which means it can occasionally be used to completely remove dangerous debuffs, if they also apply a slow.

Mass Invisibility can occasionally be useful to skip certain packs.