Arcane Mage DPS Spell List and Glossary — Dragonflight 10.2
On this page, we present you with all spells and procs that you need to understand as an Arcane Mage in World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.2.
If you were looking for WotLK Classic content, please refer to our WotLK Classic Arcane Mage spells.
Arcane Mage Spell Summary
If you are new to Arcane, it is recommended you read this before proceeding! In this section, we will discuss what abilities you have, what they are used for within the specialization, and how they interact with important cooldowns. If you have played this spec before or have already achieved a level of comfort playing this spec in a practical environment, it is recommended you skip this section and move on to the rest of the guide.
Keep in mind, some spells might be much easier to use via macros or are more easily used in combination with other spells. Visit the macro page below to get a good idea of such macros.
Unlocking Abilities
Note that this page simply lists all the different abilities, assuming you are at max level. If you are leveling, check out our dedicated Mage Leveling page, which has detailed information on when you unlock all of these abilities.
Main Resources of Arcane Mage
Mana and Arcane Charges are your primary resources, and interact with each other in a fashion unique to Arcane.
Arcane Charges are generated by Arcane Blast and
Arcane Explosion, and by some talented spells. They go to a maximum
of 4 and increase the Mana cost of Arcane Blast by 100% per stack.
They also increase the damage of Arcane Blast and
Arcane Barrage by a
percentage dictated by your current Mastery value.
Mana is the main resource of Arcane Mages. With the above information in mind, managing your Mana can be a challenging task. On one hand, casting spells while at 4 Arcane Charges allows you to do maximum damage. The consequence of this is that you will quickly chew through your Mana bar, leaving you with no option but to stand there and wait for your Mana to slowly regenerate. This relationship between Mana and Arcane Charges forms the central theme of the Arcane specialization and will be discussed at length later in the guide.
Baseline Abilities for Arcane Mage
These abilities are available no matter what talents you chose and form the bread and butter of this specialization.
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
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AB | This is your main filler and nuke and generates 1 Arcane Charge when cast. This spell has a low Mana cost when you have no Arcane Charges, but can make your Mana bar disappear in only a handful of casts at 4 Arcane Charges. It has no travel time, which makes it great for instantly applying damage or finishing off an important add. |
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AB | This is your main filler and nuke and generates 1 Arcane Charge when cast. This spell has a low Mana cost when you have no Arcane Charges, but can make your Mana bar disappear in only a handful of casts at 4 Arcane Charges. It has no travel time, which makes it great for instantly applying damage or finishing off an important add. |
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Abarr | Although technically a talent, Arcane Barrage is the very first
node and required to pick. It is an instant-cast spell that clears your Arcane
Charges and makes your Arcane Blast cheaper to cast again. This ability is used
as a reset button to help you maintain a stable Mana pool. You can generate
charges with ![]() ![]() |
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AM | Although technically a talent, Arcane Missiles is the second node
and required to pick. It is a channeled spell that deals more damage then
Arcane Blast. It can be cast at any time, but in practice is only used in
combination with the ![]() ![]() |
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AE | Arcane Explosion is an instant cast spell which is your primary AoE ability that generates 1 Arcane Charge if you hit any amount of targets with it. Unlike Arcane Blast, the Mana cost and damage of Arcane Explosion does not go up with the number of Arcane Charges. Unlike practically all other Arcane Mage spells, Arcane Explosion, requires you to be near the targets you want to hit, potentially putting you closer to danger. |
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CC | The only rotational proc Arcane has. This proc
allows you to cast ![]() ![]() |
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Invis | Invisibility is a utility spell that makes you invisible over 3 seconds. It can be very useful to skip certain enemies in a dungeon or open world content. Additionally, it also completely drops your aggro over 3 seconds, which can be useful when you are at risk of getting aggro on enemies. |
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- | Blink is an instant cast spell that immediately travels you 20 yards forward, breaking any stuns and roots you might be affected by. This iconic Mage spell is a very strong mobility spell that helps with getting around the battlefield. |
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CS | Counterspell is an instant-cast spell that is not on the global cooldown, which, when cast, will interrupt your target's spell cast and also locking them out of casting any spells of the same school as the interrupted spell for 6 seconds. If you cast this on a target that is not casting, it will have no effect. |
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TW/BL | Time Warp is an instant cast spell that is not on the global cooldown,
which increases Haste by 30% for 40 seconds for all party and
raid members within 100 yards. This ability debuffs everyone with a debuff that
prevents the possibility of benefiting from Time Warp, ![]() ![]() |
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AI | Arcane Intellect buffs the entire raid, giving them more Intellect. Mages are the only class that gives this buff, so most raids will want at least 1 Mage to ensure the raid has this buff. |
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Poly | Polymorph, one of the most iconic Mage spells in the game, turns your target into a critter that cannot do anything while at the same time healing them. This spell does no damage. Instead, it heals your target, so it is not used in any DPS rotations. However, it is a very useful spell used very actively in PvP and sometimes in PvE content to reduce the number of enemies you are fighting at the same time. There are different collectibles to change the appearance of your Polymorphed target, but as a baseline, your target turns into a sheep. |
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Cone/CoC | Cone of Cold is an instant-cast spell that slows enemies in front of you. It is generally not used as a damage spell but purely as a control spell. |
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- | Conjure Refreshment is a utility spell that generates food for you. If you are in a group, instead of directly creating food, it instead creates a table that you and your party or raid members can click to gain food instead. This food will regenerate health and mana out of combat while eating it, but it does not provide any combat buffs like some other types of food. |
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- | Slow Fall is an instant-cast spell that, as the name suggests, makes you fall more slowly, avoiding any fall damage. You can also use this on other players to reduce their falling speed and fall damage. This is primarily used to save yourself from dying when falling from high places and in some niche PvP situations. |
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FB/IB | Fire Blast (often abbreviated IB due to its old name, "Inferno Blast") is an instant-cast spell that does a tiny bit of damage. It is generally not used as part of any DPS rotation, but it has some niche uses, like tagging enemies quickly or stopping an enemy in PvP from eating food. |
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- | Frost Nova is an instant-cast spell that does a bit of damage to targets around you, freezing them in the process. This freeze effect stops them from moving but not from using any spells or abilities. The freeze effect can also break from damage, both yours or anyone else's damage. This spell is usually not used in a DPS rotation, but it is often used for its crowd control effects in PvP or open-world content. |
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- | Frostbolt is a spell that does a bit of damage and slows the target. It is generally not used in a DPS rotation. There are other ways to slow enemies that do not require casting that are often preferred, but it is sometimes used in niche situations in PvP. |
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- | Portal is a spell that opens up a portal to a specific destination. There are multiple variants of this spell that open up Portals to most of the big cities in World of Warcraft. Anyone in your party or raid group can take this portal to quickly travel around the world. |
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- | Teleport is a lot like ![]() |
To learn how to use these abilities together in your rotation, read the rotation part of our guide below.
Class Tree Active Abilities for Arcane Mage
In this section, we will go over all the active abilities in the Mage general talent tree. Active abilities are abilities you can press yourself.
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
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- | Prismatic Barrier is an instant-cast spell that provides you a shield that absorbs damage before your health pool. Additionally, while the shield is up, it also reduces the Magic damage you take by 15% and reduces the duration of harmful Magic effects by 25%. This is an incredibly strong defensive tool, and proper usage of this will increase your survivability greatly. |
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Block/IB | |
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- | Spellsteal is a utility spell that steals one beneficial effect from your target and applies it to yourself for a maximum of 2 minutes. There are many powerful effects in all types of content that can be stolen with this spell, which can greatly boost your damage or survivability. |
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- | Remove Curse can be used to remove Curses from your raid or party. |
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MI | Mirror Image spawns 3 copies nearby which will attack your enemies. While you have at least one copy alive, you will take 20% less damage. Any direct damage will you take will cause one of the copies to be removed. These copies can not be controlled, but they do have a health bar and can die. Although the copies do some damage, it is primarily a defensive ability, as the damage they do is very low. The copies will also take aggro before you, which allows you to survive significantly longer in solo content. |
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AT | Alter Time can be used as both a defensive and a mobility tool. Ten seconds after casting this ability, or after pressing it a second time, you will be returned to your location and health from when you cast it. One common usage is to activate it right before a big hit and then re-activating it after the big hit to immediately heal back to full health. |
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- | Mass Polymorph is an AoE version of ![]() |
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- | Slow is an instant cast spell that slows your target by 50%. It can be active on multiple enemies at the same time. It is a very effective tool for kiting enemies. |
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Ring/RoF | Ring of Frost allows you to spawn a relatively big Ring of Frost in a targeted location that will incapacitate enemies for 10 seconds. Only enemies in the actual outer section of the circle, get incapacitated. Any damage will break the incapacitation effect. |
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- | Ice Nova is an instant cast spell that freezes your target and
targets around it for 2 seconds. Although it does do some damage, it is
generally not used for the damage aspect, as the damage is not high enough to
make it worth casting just for damage. Unlike the freeze from
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- | Shimmer replaces ![]() |
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IF | Ice Floes while placed in the same node as ![]() ![]() |
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BW | Blast Wave is an instant cast spell that does a bit of damage, but more importantly, it knocks all enemies close to you away from you and slows them by 70%. It is generally not used as a DPS ability but used only for its crowd control effects. The knockback will also interrupt enemies that are casting. |
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GI | Greater Invisibility is a very strong defensive ability. This can
help your healers out in a lot of situations when high damage is incoming. It
also removes some debuffs and often stops any type of targeted ability from
hitting you. It replaces ![]() |
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DB | Dragon's Breath is another short-range instant cast crowd control spell. It will disorient all enemies in front of you for 4 seconds when cast, canceled by damage. It is often used as a way to interrupt targets in front of you, or to give you time to cast something else while the enemies are disoriented. |
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SP | Shifting Power is a channeled AoE ability. While channeling, it will do decent damage to enemies around you while also decreasing the cooldown of all your spells by 12 seconds. The cooldown reduction is very significant for your shorter cooldown spells, but not very significant for your longer cooldown spells. |
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- | Displacement is another instant-cast mobility spell that teleports
you back to the location you last used ![]() ![]() |
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- | Applies ![]() |
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- | Makes you and all your party or raid members invisible for 12 seconds.
The invisibility breaks when any ability or item is used and does not work if
applied when already in combat. ![]() |
Class Tree Passive abilities for Arcane Mage
In this section, we will go over all the passive abilities in the Mage general talent tree. Passive abilities are abilities you cannot press yourself, but instead apply some effect to other abilities.
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
---|---|---|
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- | Overflowing Energy boosts the damage of your critical strikes by 10%. Additionally, it will increase your chance to critically strike by 2% every time you fail to crit, stacking up to 5 times (10%). Whenever you crit, the bonus chance resets to 0%. |
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IF | Incanter's Flow increases your damage by 4-20%, cycling every 10 seconds. |
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- | Winter's Protection reduces the cooldown of ![]() |
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- | Tempest Barrier gives you an absorb shield worth 3% (per talent
point, max 2 points) of your maximum health any time you use ![]() ![]() |
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- | Incantation of Swiftness gives you 40% (per talent point, max 2
points) increased movement speed after casting ![]() ![]() |
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- | Arcane Warding reduces all magic damage you take by 2%. (per talent point, max 2 points) |
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- | Cryo Freeze heals you for 40/80% of your maximum health while inside
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- | Reduplication reduces your ![]() |
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- | Reabsorption heals you for 5% of your maximum health whenever one
of your ![]() |
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- | Quick Witted reduces your ![]() |
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- | Master of Time reduces the cooldown of ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | Diverted Energy causes your ![]() |
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- | Mass Slow makes it so that your ![]() |
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- | Improved Frost Nova increases the duration of ![]() |
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- | Rigid Ice allows the freeze from ![]() |
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- | Increases your Critical Strike chance by 2%. |
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- | Increases your Haste by 2%. |
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VD | Reduces the cooldown of ![]() |
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- | Causes ![]() ![]() |
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- | Increases the snare effects of all your snares by an additional 5/10%. This works for all snares, not just Frost spells. |
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- | Reduces the cooldown of ![]() ![]() |
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- | Increases your movement speed by 5% (per talent
point, max 2 points) after you ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | Gives ![]() |
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- | Reduces the cooldown of your crowd control
abilities by 1 second any time you cast ![]() ![]() |
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- | Causes your ![]() |
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- | Causes your ![]() |
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TA | Gives you a chance to randomly proc
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- | While you have ![]() ![]() |
Spec Tree Active Abilities for Arcane Mage
In this section, we will go over all the active abilities in the Arcane talent tree. Active abilities are abilities you can press yourself.
Arcane Barrage and
Arcane Missiles are technically talents,
but they are the first 2 nodes and required to pick, so they are described
under the base abilities section.
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
---|---|---|
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AO | Shoots an Arcane Orb forward (depending on how you are facing), giving you one Arcane Charge when cast, and another for each target struck. |
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AS/Surge | This is Arcane's biggest DPS cooldown. It consumes all Mana, and deals very high damage based on the Mana consumed by your target and all enemies nearby your target. (reduced beyond 5 targets) Additionally, it increases your Mana regeneration by 425% and Spell Damage by 35% for 15 seconds after casting it. The 35% bonus damage is also applied to Arcane Surge damage itself. The increased Mana regeneration is enough to bring you back to full Mana throughout the buff, if you were to cast no other abilities. |
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AF (sometimes) | Summons a Familiar that does a bit of damage to your target, and increases your maximum Mana by 10% for 1 hour. The Familiar spawned is not like a normal pet, as it cannot take damage, nor can it die. |
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PoM | Causes your next 2 ![]() |
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NT | An instant cast spell that puts a damage-over-time (DoT) effect on your target for 12 seconds. The DoT damage will hit your primary target and enemies near your target. For every Arcane Charge active when casting Nether Tempest, it will do 60% more damage. Although it has no cooldown, it can only be applied to 1 target. |
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ToTM | A relatively short cooldown spell that when applied to your target will accumulate 20% of the damage done to the target for 10 seconds, after which it explodes for the total damage accumulated to the primary target, and reduced damage to nearby targets. Additionally, it also generates 4 Arcane Charges, allowing to immediately go into high burst windows without first needing to build up Arcane charges. |
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SN | A 25-second crowd control ability that knocks your target (if it is an enemy target) and surrounding enemies into the air. This can be used both on enemy and friendly targets but will only knock up enemy targets, and does double damage to the primary target. Although this ability does damage, the damage is very lackluster and is primarily used for its crowd control effect. |
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Evo | Not a direct damage cooldown, strictly speaking, but it does restore 100% of your Mana bar. As noted, Mana is damage for Arcane Mages, so this ability ends up having a high DPS value. Generally, Evocation will be used when you are out of Mana at the tail end of a burst window, but with certain talents, the exact usage of Evocation can change. |
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- | Generates a ![]() |
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RS | Does some initial damage and applies a DoT that does damage over 10 seconds. More importantly, it causes your direct damage spells to do 10% increased damage, stacking every time you hit the target with a direct spell, up to 40%. After reaching 4 stacks, the effect ends. |
Spec Tree Passive Abilities for Arcane Mage
In this section, we will go over all the passive abilities in the Arcane talent tree. Passive abilities are abilities you cannot press yourself, but instead apply some effect to other abilities.
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
---|---|---|
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- | Gives you a 50% chance to get an additional Arcane
Charge when ![]() |
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- | Makes your ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | Increases your Haste by 2% for 12 seconds any time you consume an Arcane Charge, stacking up to 5 times. |
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- | Increases the damage of Arcane Missiles by 10% per talent point, up to 2 points. |
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- | Increases the damage of ![]() ![]() |
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- | Increases the damage of your next 2
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Ro3/RoT | Causes your next ![]() ![]() |
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- | Gives ![]() |
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Reso | Makes ![]() |
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- | Makes your ![]() |
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- | Allows you to cast ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | Makes ![]() ![]() |
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- | Makes it so that after standing still for 10 seconds, you
will be able to cast any spell while moving for 4 seconds. If you have the
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- | Makes ![]() |
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- | Makes ![]() |
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- | Causes ![]() |
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- | Allows you to stack ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | Adds a lot of kiting capability to
Arcane by increasing your movement speed by 50% and slowing your enemies by 50%
for 5 seconds when you hit ![]() |
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EN | Increases your Arcane Damage while above 70% Mana by 6%, while increasing your Mana Regen while below 70% Mana by 20%. |
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Echo | Causes your ![]() ![]() |
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Abomb/Bombardment | Will increase the damage of
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- | increases the chance of
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SS | Causes ![]() |
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- | Causes your Arcane charges to further increase the Mastery Effectiveness of Arcane Blast and Arcane Barrage by 20% per talent point (max 2). |
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- | Causes ![]() ![]() |
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- | Makes it so that you get 2 ![]() ![]() |
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- | Makes your ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | Causes damage you deal to the target with
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Harmony | Causes your ![]() ![]() |
For more information on when to pick the above-described talented abilities, and their relative strength, see our talent page.
Changelog
- 06 Nov. 2023: Reviewed for patch 10.2.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated all spells and talents for the Arcane Mage rework of 10.1.5
- 01 May 2023: Updated some descriptions to be more clear and cleaned up some duplicate spells.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 30 Nov. 2022: Updated Temporal Warp description for changed time warp functionality.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 24 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Mage Guides
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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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