Arcane Mage DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0)

Arcane is largely focused around a couple of key concepts:

• Use cooldowns quickly. This is important for almost all specs in the game, but Arcane really suffers when you sit on your cooldowns for a long time. Not only are you losing damage from not gaining the damage benefits from your cooldowns like Arcane Surge, but your mana generation is directly tied to your cooldowns, further lowering your damage and making it much harder to remain at 4 Arcane Charges.
• Not wasting Arcane Salvo stacks. Arcane Salvo provides a massive damage increase to Arcane Barrage, so we want to make sure we do not overcap Arcane Salvo stacks while also making sure we have 4 Arcane Charges ready when we cap Arcane Salvo so we can immediately use Arcane Barrage.
• Minimizing casts while on low Arcane Charges. Since our primary abilities both scale their damage with Arcane Charges, it is important we try to avoid casting these ( Arcane Blast and Arcane Barrage) while on low charges as much as possible. The main methods we avoid this is by using Arcane Orb and High Voltage. Since Arcane is very mana hungry, this is not always avoidable, but it is still important to keep in mind.

This leads us to the following basic rotation:

• Cast Arcane Surge into Touch of the Magi when both are ready. Also activate any on-use trinkets or racials that provide damage bonuses or stat increases.
• If only Touch of the Magi is ready, but not Arcane Surge, cast Touch of the Magi. You can do this once in-between each Arcane Surge usage.
• Cast Arcane Barrage when you have 4 Arcane Charges and maximum Arcane Salvo stacks.
• Cast Arcane Missiles when you have Clearcasting.
• Cast Arcane Orb when you have fewer than 2 Arcane Charges.
• Cast Arcane Blast as your filler. Even on multiple targets!
• Cast Arcane Barrage when unable to cast Arcane Blast due to being out of mana.

If you feel like you have a good understanding of the basics, we recommend checking out the other tabs for the full single-target and AoE rotations.

The rotation of an Arcane Mage is outlined in the following priority list. You should read the priority list from top to bottom, and then execute the first step where all conditions match.

1. Cast Arcane Surge when it is ready, and Touch of the Magi will be ready within the next 5 seconds. Also activate any on-use trinkets or racials that provide damage bonuses or stat increases.
2. Cast Touch of the Magi when Arcane Surge has around 5 seconds of duration left.
3. Cast Arcane Surge when it and Touch of the Magi are ready. Also activate any on-use trinkets or racials that provide damage bonuses or stat increases.
4. If you do have 20 Arcane Salvo stacks and Touch of the Magi is ready: Cast Arcane Barrage into Touch of the Magi while Arcane Barrage is traveling to the target.
5. If you do not have 20 Arcane Salvo stacks and Touch of the Magi is ready: Cast Arcane Missiles into Touch of the Magi.
6. Cast Touch of the Magi once in-between each Arcane Surge usage. Make sure to use it quickly after it becomes available to ensure you do not have to delay Arcane Surge later.
7. Cast Presence of Mind when Touch of the Magi has less than one second left, immediately followed by Arcane Blast, to fit in one extra Arcane Blast.
8. Cast Arcane Barrage while Arcane Soul is active.
9. Cast Arcane Barrage if you have 4 Arcane Charges and 25 stacks of Arcane Salvo.
10. Cast Arcane Barrage if you have 4 Arcane Charges and 20 stacks of Arcane Salvo.
11. Cast Arcane Barrage when you have 4 Arcane Charges, more than 10 stacks of Arcane Salvo and have Overpowered Missiles.
12. Cast Arcane Missiles if you have Clearcasting.
13. Cast Arcane Orb when you have fewer than 2 Arcane Charges.
14. Cast Arcane Orb if you have Clearcasting.
15. Cast Evocation if you have less than 10% mana and Arcane Surge and Touch of the Magi are not active.
16. Cast Arcane Blast as your filler.
17. Cast Arcane Barrage when you do not have enough mana to cast Arcane Blast.

The AoE rotation for Arcane Mage is extremely similar to the single-target rotation. You can be slightly more aggressive with Arcane Barrage usage, but there are really only minor differences compared to single-target.

1. Cast Arcane Surge when it is ready, and Touch of the Magi will be ready within the next 5 seconds. Also activate any on-use trinkets or racials that provide damage bonuses or stat increases.
2. Cast Touch of the Magi when Arcane Surge has around 5 seconds of duration left.
3. Cast Arcane Surge when it and Touch of the Magi are ready. Also activate any on-use trinkets or racials that provide damage bonuses or stat increases.
4. If you do have 20 Arcane Salvo stacks and Touch of the Magi is ready: Cast Arcane Barrage into Touch of the Magi while Arcane Barrage is traveling to the target.
5. If you do not have 20 Arcane Salvo stacks and Touch of the Magi is ready: Cast Arcane Missiles into Touch of the Magi.
6. Cast Arcane Barrage while Arcane Soul is active.
7. Cast Arcane Barrage if you have 4 Arcane Charges, Arcane Orb is ready, and you have fewer than 18 Arcane Salvo stacks. If you have more than 18 stacks, hold until 25.
8. Cast Arcane Barrage if you have 4 Arcane Charges and 25 stacks of Arcane Salvo.
9. Cast Arcane Barrage if you have 4 Arcane Charges, Arcane Orb is ready, and you have fewer than 13 Arcane Salvo stacks. If you have more than 13 stacks, hold until 20.
10. Cast Arcane Barrage if you have 4 Arcane Charges and 20 stacks of Arcane Salvo.
11. Cast Arcane Barrage when you have 4 Arcane Charges, more than 10 stacks of Arcane Salvo and have Overpowered Missiles.
12. Cast Arcane Missiles if you have Clearcasting.
13. Cast Arcane Orb when you have fewer than 2 Arcane Charges.
14. Cast Arcane Orb if you have Clearcasting.
15. Cast Evocation if you have less than 10% mana and Arcane Surge and Touch of the Magi are not active.
16. Cast Arcane Blast as your filler.
17. Cast Arcane Pulse as your filler.
18. Cast Arcane Barrage when you are out of mana.

Arcane Salvo is a stacking buff which is granted by using Arcane Missiles, which greatly increases Arcane Barrage damage. It can also be generated with Arcane Blast and Arcane Pulse when specced into Expanded Mind, which is generally always done due to how important Salvo stacks are. There are also various other talents and hero talents that can generate stacks.

Not only does Arcane Salvo itself greatly increase the damage of Arcane Barrage, with the addition of Intuition, having maximum Arcane Salvo stacks (20 as Spellslinger, 25 as Sunfury) becomes even more important, as the damage bonus only applies when you use Arcane Barrage on maximum stacks.

Due to this, Arcane Salvo and Intuition have a massive impact on the rotation, as the entire rotation basically revolves around trying to build up to maximum Arcane Salvo stacks efficiently, then using Arcane Barrage and making sure rebuilding both Arcane Charges and Arcane Salvo stacks is as efficient as possible.

Arcane is one of the few DPS specs that cares about its mana, which is primarily driven by Arcane Charges. Arcane Charges are a special resource that stack up to 4 times, each stack greatly increasing the damage and mana cost of Arcane Blast, while also greatly increasing the damage of Arcane Barrage. (but not the mana cost) Arcane Charges are mainly stacked by Arcane Blast on single-target, or Arcane Explosion and Arcane Pulse in AoE, but various other spells and talents also generate them.

Since Arcane Charges massively increase the damage of your core damaging abilities, you will generally want to spend as much time as possible casting abilities on 4 Arcane Charges, minimizing time spent casting spells on low Charges. However, only casting Arcane Blast while on 4 Arcane Charges will very quickly run you out of mana.

To handle this, Arcane has various tools. Arcane Barrage being the main one, as it resets Arcane Charges back to 0, resetting the mana cost increase as well as the damage, while itself doing massive damage, if used with high Arcane Salvo stacks.

This creates the core rotation of building up to 4 Arcane Charges -> getting max Arcane Salvo stacks -> casting a hard-hitting, stack resetting Arcane Barrage.

Arcane does have a few other tools to manage mana, notably Arcane Surge. Although Arcane Surge itself fully drains your mana, it also grants so much mana generation, that it actually causes you to regenerate to full mana after casting it. Although Arcane Surge damage scales with your mana when you cast it, you practically never care about this, because the extra damage is minor. So you actually use Arcane Surge instead as a method to regenerate back to full mana by casting it when you are low.

Then, there are a few other less common ways to generate mana, like using Evocation (only sometimes talented) or the passive Mana Adept (also only sometimes talented).

Finally, arguably the most important method of regenerating your mana: Passive mana generation. Arcane has high mana generation, because your Mastery not only increases your damage, but also increases your passive mana generation, which throughout the entire fight actually adds up to a very large amount of total mana gained.

Arcane Surge is Arcane's primary DPS cooldown. It has a 90 second cooldown, and when used drains all of your mana for one big hit on your target and nearby enemies, dealing damage based on the mana spent. However, the real benefit comes after the initial cast, where it increases all your spell damage by a massive 35% for 15 seconds, while also greatly increasing your mana regeneration, which basically regains you most of the mana lost casting Arcane Surge.

Generally, you will want to use Arcane Surge immediately as it comes up, but it can be beneficial to delay it in certain cases, for example if your group is about to use Time Warp or a similar effect soon, or an important raid mechanic that needs high DPS is coming soon, or additional targets that come up, etc.

Touch of the Magi is a 45 second cooldown, which applies a debuff to your target, which accumulates 20% of all damage you deal to the target for 12 seconds, and then exploding for all of the accumulated damage to the target and nearby enemies. It also grants 4 Arcane Charges, making it so that you can use it immediately on the pull without needing to build up stacks.

Touch of the Magi and Arcane Surge have very tight timings, with Touch of the Magi having exactly half the cooldown of Arcane Surge. Since the timing is so close, it is critical you use Touch of the Magi as soon as it comes up, so you do not run into a situation where Touch of the Magi is not ready when Arcane Surge is.

Time Warp is an ability which buffs your entire party or raid group within 100 yards with 30% haste for 40 seconds. This buff is shared with multiple other spells like Bloodlust and Heroism. These all put a debuff on all your group members which blocks them from getting the effect again for 10 minutes, so you cannot get this same effect from multiple sources multiple times.

As Time Warp applies to the whole group, it is generally decided by the raid or party leader when it is used, to optimize usage for the whole group, instead of just using it when it is best for your personal usage. However, if there is no assigned time or you are in a pick up group without any real leadership in terms of strategy, it is generally a safe practice to use Time Warp right after combat starts so it is up while everyone has all of their DPS cooldowns ready. Of course make sure to only do this if there will be enemies active for the entire 40 second duration of the buff on the pull, as on some fights bosses might go inactive or do some kind of phase change early on in the fight.