Dragonflight Arcane Mage DPS Guide

Arcane Mage Overview

Arcane Mages have a mastery over time and space as a theme. More often and faster than any other Mage spec, they have the ability to reverse the flow of time itself, which they can use for mobility or healing. For burst damage, they are frequently unsurpassed.


Arcane Mage, a caster who excels at dealing massive bursts of damage in brief windows, has excellent defensive and offensive tools for the majority of circumstances. Mages are one of the most defensive spell-casting classes in the game, in addition to dealing significant burst damage. If
 Blink and  Frost Nova  aren't effective enough to outrange the attacker, try  Ice Block Prismatic Barrier Greater Invisibility  Mirror Image or even  Alter Time to completely ignore the damage by stopping the passage of time. Our toolset is augmented by excellent utility and mobility spells from Dragonflight.

 

Arcane Mage Talent Builds

For a more raid oriented talent build, you can use the following talent loadout.

You can import the Raid talent build with the following loadout code: B4DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQCIplIikUAJNhISikIhEaBSLJAAAAAAAAAAAAJJJJhkkkcAA

For a more Mythic+ oriented talent build, you can use the following talent loadout. 

You can import the Mythic+ talent build with the following loadout code: B4DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIJQolIJSSDk0kIiISiESolg0SCAAAAAAAAAAAgkkkESSSiA

 

Arcane Mage Stats

Intellect is our primary stat, found on cloth gear. Intellect increases spell power and damage done on abilities.

For secondary stats, Arcane Mages have the following:

  • Intellect > Versatility > Critical Strike > Haste > Mastery
  • Critical Strike: Chance for extra effectiveness on attacks and heals.
  • Haste: Increases attack speed and spell casting speed.
  • Mastery: Increases the effectiveness of  Mastery: Savant, increasing your mana and mana regeneration as well as the damage of all Arcane spells.
  • Versatility: Increases damage and healing, and reduces damage taken.

 

Best Arcane Mage Consumables

Best Arcane Mage Enchants

Below is a list of the recommended enchants to use on your Arcane Mage gear in Dragonflight.

Slot Best Enchant Cheaper Version
Weapon  Sophic Devotion  Sophic Writ
Cloak  Homebound Speed  Writ of Speed
Chest  Waking Stats  Reserve of Intellect
Bracers  Devotion of Speed  Writ of Speed
Legs  Temporal Spellthread  Temporal Spellthread
Boots  Plainsrunner's Breeze  Plainsrunner's Breeze
Ring  Devotion of Critical Strike  Writ of Critical Strike

 

Arcane Mage Phials

 Phial of Charged Isolation and  Phial of Static Empowerment are tied for the strongest phials to use, however they both have use conditions they may not always be relevant in the content you're in.  Iced Phial of Corrupting Rage is the next runner-up but it too also has a drawback that may be very unwise to use for some players in progression raiding. When you don't want to deal with one of the above effects,  Phial of Elemental Chaos is a decent alternative, it is not as strong but carries no potential negative value either. Overall, the weakest simming phial is somehow the best one I can recommend at this time;  Phial of Tepid Versatility provides a much needed defensive boost while simming roughly the same as  Phial of Elemental Chaos and not carrying any of the drawbacks of the previously mentioned phials.

Arcane Mage Combat Potions

The best combat potion for Arcane Mage is  Elemental Potion of Ultimate Power, which there is a cheaper option available with  Elemental Potion of Power.

Arcane Mage Weapon Buff

For their weapons, Arcane Mages will always use  Buzzing Rune

Best Arcane Mage Food

Best Arcane Mage Gems

You should use sims to decide what gems to use but you can default to  Crafty Alexstraszite in your gem slots if you want.

 

Arcane Mage Rotation and Priority

Arcane Mage Opener/Cooldowns

Prepull

  1. Cast  Arcane Familiar if it's not already up.
  2. Channel  Evocation fully for the  Siphon Storm buff.
  3. Cast  Arcane Blast ~2 seconds before pull.
Pull
  1. Use any 30-second or higher duration buffs (potions, some trinkets and external effects) and cast  Time Warp twice, we cast this twice because  Temporal Warp allows it to stack.
  2. Apply  Nether Tempest before  Rune of Power during lust only.
  3. Prior to beginning your cooldowns, try to maximize  Rune of Power time, using  Arcane Blast and  Arcane Missiles normally, make sure you have 20 stacks of  Arcane Harmony when you have around 4 (5 for non-Surge burst) GCDs worth of time left in your Rune.
Spark Phase
  1.  Radiant Spark and afterwards use any 20-second duration buffs (some trinkets and external effects).
  2. Cast  Arcane Blast 3 times.
  3. Apply  Nether Tempest using this here gains us a gcd of Surge uptime later, but also exposes us to the complexities of queueing, for more information read the common questions section about  Radiant Spark.
  4. Cast  Arcane Surge and afterwards use any 15-second or lower duration buffs (most remaining use trinkets and racials).
Touch Phase
  1. In pure single target, with lust, and outside of execute (35%), cast  Arcane Blast and queue up a  Arcane Barrage to follow and while it is midair cast  Touch of the Magi. This is best accomplished with a macro when at close ranges, available in the advanced section below. With more than one target or during execute, or if we simply cannot spell=44425] first due to time or haste constraints we skip the  Arcane Blast in this step; this is a small optimization.
  2. During execute (35%), try to land  Arcane Barrage in the last moment of your  Touch of the Magi, outside of execute use  Presence of Mind at the very end of your to squeeze in an additional  Arcane Blast.
  3.  Arcane Barrage at the very end of your  Arcane Surge buff.
  4. Cast  Shifting Power after all your cooldowns are over, make sure  Arcane Orb is also on cooldown.

Arcane Mage Single Target Rotation and Priority

  1. If  Rune of Power will be up soon, stop using  Arcane Barrage so you can retain  Arcane Harmony stacks for burst windows.
  2.  Arcane Orb at less than 2  Arcane Charges.
  3. Cast  Presence of Mind and  Arcane Blast if your target is in execute range and you are below 3  Arcane Charges in execute, outside of execute save  Presence of Mind for your cooldown phase. This is to help speed up charge gen for more execute damage.
  4. Cast  Arcane Missiles if you have 3 stacks of  Clearcasting.
  5. Apply  Nether Tempest if there is more than one target or as a tool to conserve mana when you have 4  Arcane Charges.
  6.  Arcane Barrage, if you have 4  Arcane Charges and less than 70% mana, under the effects of  Time Warp and your next burn will be a miniburn and is more than 5s away.
  7.  Arcane Barrage, if you have 4  Arcane Charges and less than 60% mana and your next burn will be a miniburn and is more than 5s away.
  8.  Arcane Blast, if your next burn is a big burn with  Evocation, do this until out of mana.
  9.  Ice Nova and  Fire Blast are great spells for mana efficiency and movement when you don't need to apply  Nether Tempest.  Frostbolt is also a great spell if you overspend mana and need to spend time regening.

Arcane Mage Multi Target Rotation and Priority

Multitarget Opener/Cooldowns

In Dragonflight this has a lot of similarities to the single target burst rotation, simply find a priority target to focus on. Nothing here is final and theorycrafting is on-going, will update as I know more! A lot of our damage in AOE revolves around  Arcane Barrage and  Arcane Echo which should be evident in the below.

Prepull
  1. Cast  Arcane Familiar if it's not already up and you are speced into it.
  2. Channel  Evocation fully for the  Siphon Storm buff.
Pull
  1. Cast  Time Warp twice, we cast this twice because  Temporal Warp allows it to stack.
  2.  Arcane Missiles until you have 20 stacks of  Arcane Harmony.
Spark Phase
  1. Use any 20-second or higher duration buffs (potions, some trinkets and external effects) then cast  Radiant Spark.
  2. Cast  Arcane Orb if you didn't earlier and need charges, cast  Arcane Explosion if you don't need charges and have a CC proc already;  Ice Nova also works here if  Arcane Orb is on cd and you don't need charges and don't have a CC proc for  Arcane Explosion to consume and proc  Nether Precision for your later  Arcane Blast.
  3. Apply  Nether Tempest, this is best cast before  Arcane Surge, but you need to understand why spell queueing matters, please read the common questions radiant spark explanation and understand your options for preventing spell queueing on this sequence.
  4. Cast  Arcane Surge and afterwards use any 15-second or lower duration buffs (most remaining use trinkets and racials).
  5. Use trinkets, then cast  Arcane Barrage and while it is midair apply  Touch of the Magi.
  6. Use trinkets, then cast an unqueued  Arcane Barrage and while it is midair apply  Touch of the Magi.
  7.  Arcane Barrage whenever you have 4  Arcane Charges.
  8. Cast  Arcane Explosion to generate  Arcane Charges.
  9. Try to land  Arcane Barrage in the last moment of your  Touch of the Magi.
  10. You may get another  Arcane Barrage at the very end of your  Arcane Surge buff if you have a  Arcane Orb up.
  11. Cast  Shifting Power after all your cooldowns are over, make sure  Arcane Orb is also on cooldown.

Multitarget Conserve Phase

The filler for AOE is simple. in single target or at 2 targets, you simply do the single target filler rotation, at 3 targets, you will do the following:

  1. Cast  Ice Nova.
  2.  Arcane Orb at less than 2  Arcane Charges.
  3.  Arcane Explosion until you have 4 Arcane Charges.

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