Arcane Mage DPS Mythic+ Tips — Midnight Season 1

Arcane Mage has been a strong Mythic+ spec in recent years, and that is no different in Season 1. It has great AoE damage, while able to do very high priority target damage, better than almost any other spec in the game. It also comes with great utility and survivability, making it a very desirable spec to bring to any Mythic+ group.

In Mythic+, your role is usually to focus on killing high priority targets very quickly, while still doing great overall damage at the same time. This generally makes Arcane very valuable in any Mythic+ group.

2.

Best Mythic+ Talents for Arcane Mage

Spellslinger Mythic+ Build Sunfury Mythic+ Build Flexible Talents / Dungeon Specific Talents

2.1.

Sunfury Mythic+ Build

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.

2.2.

Spellslinger Mythic+ Build

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

2.3.

Flexible Talents / Dungeon Specific Talents

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.

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:

• 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.
• A Mage can add a lot of crowd control in the form of Dragon's Breath or Supernova, Polymorph, Ice Nova and Ring of Frost.
• 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.
• Mass Invisibility can be very useful to skip certain packs.

The AoE rotation outlined in the Rotation Page below is a perfect fit for Mythic+ content.

We do provide some additional rotation tips relevant to Mythic+ below.

With the recommended talent builds, you have a lot of flexibility in what type of damage you want to do in Mythic+. Ultimately, it comes down to whether you use Arcane Pulse or Arcane Blast as your filler, with Arcane Pulse maximizing AoE and Arcane Blast maximizing priority-target DPS. Luckily, you can switch which one you use freely without needing to change your talents, allowing you to pick and choose depending on the pack.

Generally the choice is quite obvious: If there is a target in the pack that is very dangerous if left alive for a long time, you simply use Arcane Blast as your filler, but if that is not the case, you instead use Arcane Pulse as your spender.

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 some water so you can generate mana out of combat if needed.
• Make sure you drink some water if you are low on mana while moving to the next pack. The easiest way to do this is to Blink or Shimmer ahead right after a pack dies and getting in 2 or 3 seconds of drinking.

This section has Mage-specific tips for dealing with the various affixes of Mythic+. If you want general guides for each of our Dungeons or Mythic+ in general, check out our dedicated page below.

Season 1 of Midnight has four rotating Affixes which require active play to deal with, called Xal'ataths Bargains. These rotate every week, with only one of them being active at a time. Most other Mythic+ affixes, like Fortified or Tyrannical, simply add a passive effect to the keystone, with these four exceptions that are seasonally themed after Xal'atah:

• Xal'atath's Bargain: Ascendant: Three waves of orbs will spawn that need to be interrupted or disrupted. You have multiple ways of dealing with these: Supernova for AoE interrupt if they are close together, Counterspell for singular interrupts, and Spellsteal for any remaining ones. Since Spellsteal has no cooldown (unless talented into Improved Spellsteal), you can theoretically get rid of all of them, but this will take up a lot of time.
• Xal'atath's Bargain: Voidbound: Spawns a Void Emissary enemy which needs to be quickly killed. After it dies, you get a strong ability cooldowns and Versatility buff. If you know the add is coming soon, ensure you either have some cooldowns or mana ready so you can burst it down.
• Xal'atath's Bargain: Pulsar: Orbs will spawn around players and circle around them. You have 15 seconds to soak all of these to buff your group. Simply run into them to soak them.
• Xal'atath's Bargain: Devour: All party members will be affected by a healing absorb. You can remove these with Remove Curse. Improved Remove Curse is very useful to quickly dispell yourself and one other player. Health potions or Healthstones also work well if your healer is out of resources.

When you successfully deal with these affixes, they grant you a beneficial buff, which differs per affix. These effects are usually quite strong, but not really played around. It is however very important to deal with them correctly, as failing to do so will buff the enemies which can very quickly wipe a group.