Arcane Mage DPS Stat Priority — The War Within (11.0.5)

The following is a good guideline for stats for Arcane Mages:

1. Intellect;
2. Haste;
3. Mastery;
4. Versatility;
5. Critical Strike.

All of the secondary (non-Intellect) stats are very close in value despite the way they are ordered on our list. We encourage players to sim themselves, if possible, to determine what stats you should aim for according to your current distribution, as this may change depending on your current values. This is because a deficiency of one stat will often cause it to become high in value relative to the others until you reach a "normalized" value. Due to this, we strongly recommend using Raidbots Top Gear instead to handle your gearing needs (see our Raidbots guide).

Using purely stat weights is never the best way to go about gearing your character. On the gear page, we go in-depth into how to best gear your character for varying types of content.

Secondary stats have diminishing returns. This means as you get more points into one stat, it will take increasingly more rating to get 1% more stats. This reduction goes as follows:

• From 0 to 30%, there is no penalty.
• From 30% to 39%, there is a 10% penalty.
• From 39% to 47%, there is a 20% penalty.
• From 47% to 54%, there is a 30% penalty.
• From 54% to 66%, there is a 40% penalty.
• From 66% to 126%, there is a 50% penalty.
• You can not get more than 126% from gear rating.

Generally, you can ignore most of this, but it does again emphasize using simulations to determine what stats to use. We strongly advice you to use Raidbots Top Gear to determine what gear to equip, as it automatically handles all of these complexities for you.

The gems, enchants, and consumables you will use are directly derived from your stat priority, and you can find our advice on this topic in our dedicated page.

These statistics have been obtained by combining common sense, in-game testing, and simulations using SimulationCraft.

Intellect is your primary stat. It provides you with Spell Power, which increases the damage of your spells.

Mastery, thanks to Mastery: Savant, increases your Mana pool and Mana regeneration, allowing you to cast more spells at maximum Arcane Charges between Evocations. Savant also increases the damage buff of Arcane Charges, and additionally increases the damage of all other spells as well.

Haste increases the cast speed of your spells.

Critical Strike increases your chance to critically hit with all spells and abilities. Crits deal double damage by default, but several effects can increase your crit damage, and make crits even stronger.

Versatility is a flat-out damage done increase and damage taken reduction.