WoW Wrath Classic: Arcane Mage PVE Guide (WotLK)

This article is part of a directory: WoW Wrath Classic (WotLK): Complete Guide Directory

Table of contents

Mage Specialization PvE Guides

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Intro	Best Race	Best Professions
Talents	Major Glyphs	Minor Glyphs
Skill Rotation	Macros	Stat Priority
Enchants	Gems	Consumables
Best In Slot Gear

Introduction to Arcane Mages in Wrath of the Lich King Classic

Arcane Mages perform fairly well in Player vs Environment encounters, especially in the earlier phases of Wrath of the Lich King Classic. The play style is very simple, as single target encounters largely involve using only 2 abilities, managing mana, and cooldown usage. This specialization is suited for players who enjoy focusing on the game and not overly complicated class mechanics.

This guide is specifically intended for level 80 players focusing on PvE end-game content in WoW WotLK: Classic.

Best Race To Choose For Arcane Mages In Wrath Classic

For Horde, the only race that provides any significant advantage is Trolls for their Haste buff: Berserking. Arcane Mages damage benefits greatly from Haste, so much so that it is often the case that they will become Haste Capped, requiring them to alternate On-Use cooldowns.

For the Alliance, Draenei provide the best benefit with a 1% increased Hit Chance from Heroic Presence. Humans have The Human Spirit which helps with Molten Armor and Glyph of Molten Armor. They also have Will to Survive while very strong in PvP has limited uses in PvE. Gnomes have Expansive Mind for an increase in Intellect and Escape Artist, which is less useful than the Human Racial.

Best Professions for Arcane Mages in WotLK

The top professions for Mages to have are Engineering and Tailoring. Engineering provides many tools and buffs that will increase damage. Tailoring provides the best in slot back piece enchantment and can also create some decent cloth armor pieces.

Here is a table that shows the benefits that each profession provides that are specific to Mages. Each of these recipes can be learned from the respective profession trainer.

Profession	Benefit:
Engineering	Enchants: Boots: Nitro Boosts Gloves: Hyperspeed Accelerators Back: Springy Arachnoweave Bracers: Frag Belt Can be used in addition to Eternal Belt Buckle. Explosives: Global Thermal Sapper Charge and Saronite Bomb
Tailoring	Back Enchant: Lightweave Embroidery
Inscription	Shoulder Enchant: Master's Inscription of the Storm
Leatherworking	Leg Enchant: Fur Lining - Spell Power
Jewelcrafting	3 Jeweller's Gems: Runed Dragon's Eye
Blacksmithing	2 Extra Sockets: Socket Bracer Socket Gloves

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Best Talent Build For Arcane Mages In WoW Classic Wrath

This is the standard talent build for Level 80 Arcane Mages. The talent choices are made with the intent to maximize the damage of a simplified burst skill rotation.

best talents and glyph choices for arcane mages — Talent calculator courtesy of https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/talent-calc/mage

There is not a lot to highlight or stray away from when choosing talents for Arcane Mages. One of the major drawbacks for most Arcane Mage builds is that their damage suffers from encounters with a lot of movement. The primary sources of damage are Arcane Blast and Arcane Missiles and they both require the player to be stationary for casting. Choosing Arcane Barrage and using it to spend stacks of Arcane Blast is an option for those heavy movement encounters.

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Variations:

Depending on the encounter you are facing there are a couple of changes to take into consideration.

Magic Attunement is useful for increasing the range of Arcane spells
Arcane Meditation and Student of the Mind are both helpful for longer fights where mana conservation is necessary
Incanter's Absorption combined with Frost Warding is a unique playstyle suitable for fights where there is a lot of Fire or Frost Damage being taken. The buff doesn't stack, in the traditional sense but can be applied multiple times so long as either Frost Ward or Fire Ward is active.
Arcane Stability is another option if there is not a Holy Paladin providing Improved Concentration Aura.

Cold Snap Burst Build

The addition of Cold Snap has the potential to be a very strong cooldown to use Icy Veins again. This is only advisable for encounters that are very short, under a minute at most. There are too many sacrifices in mana efficiency to get that far down the Frost Talent tree. The Cold Snap talent build is shown in the image below.

arcane mage talents for the cold snap build in wow wotlk classic wrath — Talent calculator courtesy of https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/talent-calc/mage

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Best Major Glyphs for Arcane Mage

The Major Glyphs that provide Arcane Mages the biggest increase in damage are as follows:

Glyph of Arcane Blast for increased damage of Arcane Blast
Glyph of Arcane Missiles for increased critical strike damage of Arcane Missiles
Glyph of Molten Armor for increased critical strike rating based on Spirit when Molten Armor is active.

Best Minor Glyphs for Arcane Mage

There are only two Minor Glyphs that have any impact on performance in PvE content. Note that if players intend on using Incanter's Absorption in their talent build, a reflected spell provided by Glyph of Frost Ward and Glyph of Fire Ward will not apply the buff

Glyph of Arcane Intellect for reduced mana cost of Arcane Intellect and Arcane Brilliance.
Glyph of Slow Fall to never run out of Light Feather for Slow Fall. Particularly useful in encounters like Malygos.

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Arcane Mage Skill Rotation For Wrath of the Lich King Classic

The Skill Rotation for Arcane Mages is very simple; cast Arcane Blast and if Missile Barrage occurs, cast Arcane Missiles after the 4th Arcane Blast. Should you be unlucky and not have a Missile Barrage occur until the 6th Arcane Blast, cast Arcane Missiles to clear the stacks.

Mana Efficiency is key with Arcane Mages ; as a general rule of thumb, casting 3 Arcane Blasts followed by 1 Arcane Missiles is considered to be very mana efficient.

Use Evocation if you run out of mana, ideally timed during moments of downtime or before burst damage is required.

Arcane Mage Single Target Rotation

Mages should always have Molten Armor active as it increases Critical Strike Rating. At the beginning of a long encounter use a Potion of Speed or Potion of Wild Magic just before combat begins.

Arcane Blast x3
Mirror Image
Icy Veins and Arcane Power
Presence of Mind and Arcane Blast
Arcane Missiles
- Mana Efficient: Arcane Missiles after 3 Arcane Blast.
- Burst: Arcane Missiles if Missile Barrage occurs, else cast 1 or 2 more Arcane Blast
Evocation if out of mana

Arcane Mage AoE Rotation

For the Area of Effect DPS rotation in encounters with multiple targets (more than 2), the skill rotation will vary depending on the length of the encounter and whether or not you need to be mobile.

For quicker or mobile fights use Arcane Explosion.
For longer stationary fights use following:
- Presence of Mind with Blizzard
- Flamestrike (Rank 9)
- Flamestrike (Rank 8)
- Blizzard until dead

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Useful Macros For Arcane Mages In Wrath Classic

The use of macros improves the quality of life by performing certain actions automatically. Players can activate trinkets and cooldowns with a single button press, saving time and ensuring they all get pressed in the right order. This is built into the game through the Macro menu (type "/m" and hit <Enter> in the text chat bar).

Cast Arcane Blast Without Canceling Arcane Missiles

#showtooltip
/use [nochanneling : Arcane Missiles] Arcane Blast

Activate All Cooldowns and Cast Arcane Blast

#showtooltip
/cast Icy Veins
/cast Arcane Power
/use 14
/use 13
/cast Arcane Blast

Use 14 is the Top Trinket Slot

Use 13 is the Bottom Trinket Slot

Use 10 is the Hand Enchant Hyperspeed Accelerators

Cast AoE At Cursor

/cast [@cursor] Blizzard

and

/cast [@cursor] Flamestrike(Rank 9)

/cast [@cursor] Flamestrike(Rank 8)

Cancel Current Cast to Counterspell

#showtooltip counterspell
/stopcasting
/cast Counterspell

Use Mana Potion or Runic Mana Injector and Cast Arcane Blast

#showtooltip
/use Runic Mana Injector
/use Runic Mana Potion
/cast Arcane Blast

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Arcane Mage Stat Priority In Wrath of the Lich King

Arcane Mages tend to excel over Fire and Frost in the early phases of the expansion as they get two talents that provide the most important stat: Hit Rating.

This table outlines the stats that Arcane Mages should aim to prioritize.

Arcane Mage Stat Priority
1.	Hit Rating (up to 17% Spell Hit Cap)
2.	Spell Power
3.	Haste (until haste capped)
4.	Critical Strike Rating
5.	Intellect
6.	Spirit

WotLK Stats for Arcane Mages Explained

Hit Rating In WotLK Classic Explained For Arcane Mages

Reaching the Spell Hit Cap for Bosses (17%) is one of the most important stats to prioritize for all spell-casters. Since 100% of the damage Mages deal is Spell based, their damage will suffer if they can't hit the target, and the other stats will be useless. However, if a piece of gear has significantly higher stats but is missing the required Hit Rating that would put the player slightly below the Spell Hit cap, then it can still be taken into consideration for upgrading as the other stats might make up for it.

Each point of Hit Rating translates into approximately 0.038% Hit Percent.

Increasing your chance to hit by 1% requires 26.23 Hit Rating.

Aside from Hit Rating on equipment, there are three additional sources that can reduce the amount of Hit Rating required.

Buff (1%): Heroic Presence
- The Draenei passive racial trait provides a 1% to party members only, not the entire raid.
Debuff (3%) : Misery or Improved Faerie
- Shadow Priests or Balance Druids will almost always choose their respective talent and provide this debuff on the target.
Talents (1-6%) : Precision and Arcane Focus *
- All Mages talent builds generally choose Precision but only Arcane spells benefit from Arcane Focus .

Because of these external sources of Hit Rating, the composition of the group may change the way that a player will choose to obtain the required Hit Rating to never miss a spell against a Boss. This table details the different ways players can reach the 17% Spell Hit Cap.

Hit Percent From Buff, Debuff, and/or Talents		Hit Rating Needed From Gear
0%		446
1%	Buff	420
2%		394
3%	Talents	368
4%	Talents and Buff	341
5%		315
6%	Both Talents	289
7%	Both Talents and Buff	263
8%		237
9%	Both Talents and Debuff	210
10%	Both Talents and Debuff and Buff	184

Spell Power for Arcane Mages

Spell Power directly increases the damage of all spells . This is key to increasing the raw damage value of all spells cast and is further improved by talents such as Arcane Empowerment which improves Arcane Blast and Arcane Missiles .

Haste Rating for Arcane Mages

Haste Rating increases the casting speed of spells which over the course of an encounter increases the total amount of spells cast. The Haste Cap is defined by the 1.5 Second Global Cooldown ( GCD ); it can be only reduced to 1 second. This means that any spell that has its cast time faster than 1 second will be limited by the GCD and therefore reduce total DPS.

On-use Haste cooldowns in combination with other buffs will often make Arcane Mages Haste Capped.

Here are the haste caps when using Icy Veins during Heroism or Bloodlust with the talent Netherwind Presence and a Wrath of Air Totem placed in range.

942 Haste Rating with Potion of Speed
656 Haste Rating with Berserking (Trolls)
602 Haste Rating with Potion of Speed and Hyperspeed Accelerators (Engineers)
316 Haste Rating with Potion of Speed and Hyperspeed Accelerators and Berserking

Remember if you have any Trinkets, such as Sundial of the Exiled in Pre-Raid or Sundial of the Exiled in Phase 1, will also need to be taken into consideration when timing the use of haste buffs.

Critical Strike Rating for Arcane Mages

Crit is one of the least important stats for Arcane Mages as it doesn't scale very effectively and there aren't any substantial benefits or big modifiers to critical damage other than the talent Spell Power .

Intellect and Spirit for Arcane Mage

Intellect is slightly better than Spirit for Arcane Mages as it increases the Mana Pool, Critical Strike Chance and Spell Power with the talent Mind Mastery . Spirit only provides mana regeneration with Arcane Meditation and Critical Strike Chance when Molten Armor is active with Glyph of Molten Armor .

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Best WotLK Enchants For Arcane Mage

The table below shows the best enchants and their effects for each equipment slot for Mages. These enchants do not require any profession and can be provided by other players. Both the head and shoulder enchants require reputation with a faction in order to purchase and use them. We've also included the source for each of these enchants should you have the profession and are wondering where to find it.

Slot	Enchant	Effect	Source
Main-Hand	Staff : Enchant Staff - Greater Spellpower	+69 Spell Power	Enchanting (450) Recipe Purchased from Vanessa Sellers
	Enchant Weapon - Black Magic	Chance to increase Haste Rating by 250	Enchanting (440) Recipe Purchased from Vanessa Sellers
	Enchant Weapon - Mighty Spellpower	+63 Spell Power	Enchanting (435) Recipe Purchased from Vanessa Sellers
Off-Hand	Shield : Enchant Shield - Greater Intellect	+25 Intellect	Enchanting (395) Recipe Purchased from Vanessa Sellers
Head	Arcanum of Burning Mysteries	+30 Spell Power and +20 Crit Rating	Reputation: Kirin Tor - Revered Archmage Alvareaux
Shoulders	Greater Inscription of the Storm	+24 Spell Power and +15 Crit Rating	Reputation: The Sons of Hodir - Exalted Lillehoff
Back	Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed	+23 Haste Rating	Enchanting (430) Recipe Purchased from Vanessa Sellers
Chest	Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats	+10 All Stats	Enchanting (440) Recipe Purchased from Vanessa Sellers
Bracers	Enchant Bracers - Superior Spellpower	+30 Spell Power	Enchanting (440) Recipe Purchased from Vanessa Sellers
Gloves	Enchant Gloves - Exceptional Spellpower	+28 Spell Power	Enchanting (440) Recipe taught by Trainer
Waist	Eternal Belt Buckle	+1 Gem Socket to Belt	Blacksmithing (415) Recipe taught by Trainer
Legs	Brilliant Spellthread	+50 Spell Power and +20 Spirit	Tailoring (430) Recipe Purchased from Archmage Alvareaux Requires Kirin Tor - Exalted
Boots	Enchant Boots - Icewalker	+12 Critical Rating, +12 Hit Rating	Enchanting (385) Recipe taught by Trainer
Boots	Enchant Boots - Tuskarr's Vitality	Minor Movement Speed Increase (8%) and +15 Stamina	Enchanting (440) Recipe Purchased from Vanessa Sellers

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Best Gems For Arcane Mage in Wrath Classic

Arcane mages should prioritize Red Spell Power Gems even when the socket bonus is not great. In the case of Meta Gem activation with Blue Sockets required, the prismatic gem is best or a purple gem with the prefix "Purified" will also suffice. Yellow Sockets are a good place to get some extra Hit Rating if needed, otherwise, prioritize "Reckless" Haste Gems.

Slot	First Choice(s)	Effect	Alternate Choice(s)	Effect
Meta	Chaotic Skyflare Diamond	+21 Critical Strike Rating and 3% Increased Critical Damage	-	-
Blue	Nightmare Tear	+10 All Stats	Purified Dreadstone	+12 Spell Power and +10 Spirit
			Enchanted Tear	+6 to All Stats
			Purified Twilight Opal	+9 Spell Power and +8 Spirit
Red	Runed Cardinal Ruby	+23 Spell Power	Runed Scarlet Ruby	+19 Spell Power
Yellow	Rigid Stormjewel	+20 Hit Rating	Rigid Autumn's Glow	+16 Hit Rating
	Reckless Ametrine	+12 Spell Power and +10 Haste Rating	Reckless Monarch Topaz	+9 Spell Power and +8 Haste Rating
	Veiled Ametrine	+12 Spell Power and +10 Hit Rating	Veiled Monarch Topaz	+9 Spell Power and +8 Hit Rating

Mages that have Jewelcrafting (350) should always use 3Runed Dragon's Eye when possible.

Blacksmithing (400) provides 2 extra sockets with Socket Bracer and Socket Gloves

Best Consumables To Use For Arcane Mage in Wrath Raids

Players looking to maximize their performance would be well served if they brought consumable items to increase their stats. Only Flasks persist through death, but having food buffs and potions at the ready for each encounter will ensure peak performance. We've listed the best option first and also some alternatives that are not as good but are still worthwhile to have nonetheless.

Flask :

Flask of the Frost Wyrm
Alternatives:
- Spellpower Elixir , Elixir of Draenic Wisdom , Adept's Elixir , Elixir of Mighty Thoughts

Food Buff :

Fish Feast
Alternatives:
- Tender Shoveltusk Steak , Firecracker Salmon , Snapper Extreme , Great Feast , Dalaran Clam Chowder , Shoveltusk Steak , Smoked Salmon

Potions :

Depending on the encounter Potion of Speed may push a player past the haste cap with Heroism / Bloodlust , Trinkets, and Cooldowns all at the same time. In that case Potion of Wild Magic would be better.

Alternatives : Runic Mana Injector , Runic Mana Potion for mana preservation.

Scrolls :

Scrolls provide a buff that is shared with and overwritten by similar class buffs. The scrolls below that benefit mages most need only be used when that particular class is not present.

Scroll of Protection VIII is a lesser version of a Druid's Mark of the Wild .
Scroll of Stamina VIII is a lesser version of a Priest's Prayer of Fortitude .
Scroll of Spirit VIII is a lesser version of a Priest's Divine Spirit .

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Best In Slot Gear Arcane Mage Wrath Classic

Players looking to maximize their damage potential in Dungeons and Raids in Wrath Classic will need to equip the Best in Slot items for their class and specialization. We've created a list for all Mage specializations in one article, highlighting the absolute best items, but also similar options that are either just as good or very close to the top item.

Clicking the link below will bring you to the Best In Slot equipment for Mages in WoW Classic Wrath of the Lich King.

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WoW Wrath Classic: Arcane Mage PVE Guide (WotLK)

Table of Contents

Introduction to Arcane Mages in Wrath of the Lich King Classic

Best Race To Choose For Arcane Mages In Wrath Classic

Best Professions for Arcane Mages in WotLK