Arcane Mage DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — 12.0.5

During Season 1 of Midnight, Arcane has heavily favoured Spellslinger right from the start all the way to now. This is primarily because the (by far) strongest way to play Arcane has been via the Orb Mastery build, which Spellslinger just has much better synergy with, and thus does significantly better DPS in all situations. There have been no (meaningful) tuning patches to buff up Sunfury, so this remained the case throughout the entire season.

• Raid - Spellslinger does significantly more DPS than Sunfury in all Raid encounters, so we recommend it for all raiding content. If you strongly prefer a playstyle without Orb Mastery, Sunfury is the better choice, but this is significantly behind the Spellslinger build.
• Mythic+ - This is the same story as in Raid, except the difference is even bigger. Spellslinger does significantly more damage than Sunfury, due to the Orb Mastery build being much stronger than any builds without it, and Spellslinger greatly benefits from the Arcane Orb focused playstyle.

Spellslinger does more DPS than Sunfury in all situations and is thus the preferred choice for all content. Due to current tuning, an Arcane Orb focused playstyle (via Orb Mastery) is significantly stronger than other playstyles, and Spellslinger really benefits from this setup, making it the clear winner. Sunfury can be played if you do not enjoy the Arcane Orb focused playstyle, but you will be giving up significant DPS, especially in AoE.

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The builds listed above are popular recommendations, covering various different loadouts suited to each style of endgame content. Each Talent Build will have it's own rotation, and can also be manipulated further for specific types of content and to better benefit your group.

Combat Information

Rotations and Mythic+

Want to dive deeper? These guides will teach you how to utilize our Talent Builds in endgame content!

RotationMythic+

Arcane has the following Apex Talent:

• Touch of the Archmage: Touch of the Magi increases the damage your target receives from you by 15%.
• Touch of the Archmage: Arcane Charges further increase the damage of Arcane Blast, Arcane Pulse, and Arcane Barrage. Also increases Arcane Missiles damage. Has 2 ranks. Note: This always counts, not just during Touch of the Magi.
• Touch of the Archmage: When Touch of the Magi explodes, it leaves behind a pulsing rune on its target, dealing 75% of its damage over 6 seconds to nearby enemies. This damage is increased by 50% on the initial Touch of the Magi target.

The Apex Talent is very strong for both Hero specs, and is virtually always taken. It has no meaningful rotational impact, but it does put even more emphasis on Touch of the Magi, making it very important that you use Touch of the Magi on targets that will live the entire duration, as you will lose a lot of damage if the target dies halfway through the duration.

Arcane has access to the Sunfury and Spellslinger Hero Talent trees.

Currently, Spellslinger is ahead in DPS in practically all content, which is why it is the recommended build. Sunfury is around 5-10% DPS behind on single-target and significantly more as more targets are present, so I generally do not recommend playing Sunfury with current tuning.

Sunfury spawns an Arcane Phoenix alongside you during Arcane Surge,throwing out spells of its own providing damage and some utility. Gameplay wise, the primary change is that after Arcane Surge ends, you get the very powerful Arcane Soul buff, which makes Arcane Barrage grant Clearcasting, generate four Arcane Charges, generate five Arcane Salvo charges, and casting it does not consume any Arcane Salvo charges. What this means in practice is that during Arcane Soul, you can simply spam very hard hitting Arcane Barrages.

Spellslinger is all about providing you lots of small passive bonuses to all your spells and applying many Arcane Splinters to your target. Gameplay wise, the tree is fairly passive, however, all of the passive effects together grant you quite a few extra Arcane Salvo stacks, which in turn enables you to cast more Arcane Barrages. Spellslinger also enables builds that play around Orb Mastery, because of its interactions with Arcane Orb. These builds play quite a bit different because they consume Clearcasting with Arcane Orb instead of Arcane Missiles.

Since Battle for Azeroth, there is the option to enable "War Mode." Enabling War Mode grants the following benefits:

• PvP talents enabled in the outdoor world.
• 10% increase in World Quest rewards at max level.
• 10% more experience gained while leveling.
• Earn Conquest Points, which can reward gear every week.

With the benefits of enabling War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is recommended enabling the feature to maximize your leveling and rewards at max level. However, doing so will enable PvP combat and the possibility of being attacked by members of the opposite faction while leveling or doing World Quests exists.

In this section, we will rank the War Mode talents for leveling and outdoor content.

1. Temporal Shield is off the Global Cooldown, so it can be used without sacrificing any damage and is very strong for when you know damage is incoming. You can simply tank the damage and heal back to full Health when the shield ends.
2. Ring of Fire is a great tool for AoE damage in the open world, especially on high-health targets.
3. Chrono Shift is an incredible open-world kiting and mobility tool.

Dutchmagoz

Guide Author

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This guide has been written by Dutchmagoz. Dutchmagoz has been playing Mage since 2009 and writing guides and theorycrafting since 2012, with many top 20-100 world kills and rank 1 parses under his belt. He is the owner of the official Mage Discord server Altered Time, where he is involved in Mage Theorycrafting and everything else Mage. You can reach out to him directly for questions or feedback about the guide there.