Arcane Mage DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — 12.1

Arcane Salvo is a stacking buff which is granted by using Arcane Missiles, by default, which greatly increases Arcane Barrage damage. It can also be generated with Arcane Blast, Prismatic Bolt and Arcane Orb when specced into Expanded Mind, which is generally always done due to how important Salvo stacks are. As Spellslinger, you also have a chance to generate them from Arcane Splinters.

Not only does Arcane Salvo itself greatly increase the damage of Arcane Barrage, with the addition of Intuition, having maximum Arcane Salvo stacks (20 as Spellslinger, 25 as Sunfury) becomes even more important, as the damage bonus only applies when you use Arcane Barrage on maximum stacks.

Due to this, Arcane Salvo and Intuition have a high impact on the rotation (alongside Prismatic Bolt), focusing primarily on building both Arcane Salvo charges as efficiently as possible while also trying to maximize Prismatic Bolt usages.

Arcane is one of the few DPS specs that cares about its mana, which is primarily driven by Arcane Charges. Arcane Charges are a special resource that stack up to 4 times, each stack greatly increasing the damage and mana cost of Arcane Blast and Arcane Pulse, while also greatly increasing the damage of Arcane Barrage. (but not the mana cost) Arcane Charges are mainly stacked by Arcane Blast on single-target, or Arcane Explosion and Arcane Pulse in AoE, but various other spells and talents also generate them.

Since Arcane Charges massively increase the damage of your core damaging abilities, you will generally want to spend as much time as possible casting abilities on 4 Arcane Charges, minimizing time spent casting spells on low Charges. However, only casting Arcane Blast while on 4 Arcane Charges will very quickly run you out of mana.

To handle this, Arcane has various tools. Arcane Barrage being the main one, as it resets Arcane Charges back to 0, resetting the mana cost increase as well as the damage, while itself doing massive damage, if used with high Arcane Salvo stacks.

This creates the core rotation of building up to 4 Arcane Charges -> getting max Arcane Salvo stacks -> casting a hard-hitting, stack resetting Arcane Barrage.

Arcane does have a few other tools to manage mana, notably Arcane Surge. Although Arcane Surge itself fully drains your mana, it also grants so much mana generation, that it actually causes you to regenerate to full mana after casting it. Although Arcane Surge damage scales with your mana when you cast it, you practically never care about this, because the extra damage is minor. So you actually use Arcane Surge instead as a method to regenerate back to full mana by casting it when you are low.

Then, there are a few other less common ways to generate mana, like using Evocation (only sometimes talented) or the passive Mana Adept (if talented).

Finally, arguably the most important method of regenerating your mana: Passive mana generation. Arcane has high mana generation, because your Mastery not only increases your damage, but also increases your passive mana generation, which throughout the entire fight actually adds up to a very large amount of total mana gained.

FAQWhy Is My Arcane Orb Not Generating an Arcane Charge on Pull?

It does grant you a Charge, however, when entering Raid combat, all Arcane Charges are reset to 0, so you want to make sure you cast Arcane Orb after Raid combat started. This goes for any other source of Arcane Charge generation as well, like if you are the first to hit a Raid boss with Arcane Blast, the initial charge provided by it is reset to 0.

Arcane has the following Apex Talent:

• Prismatic Bolt: Arcane Barrage gains a 1% chance per Arcane Salvo stack consumed to replace your next Arcane Blast with a Prismatic Bolt. It damages your target and nearby enemies, with reduced damage beyond 5 targets, and generates 4 Arcane Charges. It does not scale its damage or mana cost with Arcane Charges, and is not affected by anything that modifies Arcane Blast. You can hold the proc for up to a minute.
• Prismatic Bolt: Prismatic Bolt has a 50%/100% chance to grant Clearcasting, and Arcane Missiles damage is increased by 15%/30%.
• Prismatic Bolt: Adds another 1% chance per Arcane Salvo stack consumed, bringing it to 2% per stack in total, and increases Arcane Barrage damage by 15%.

The Apex talent is incredibly strong. So much so, that most of the rotation revolves around trying to get out as many Prismatic Bolts as possible, large because Prismatic Bolt itself hits incredibly hard.

This is primarily done by trying to get as many Arcane Salvo stacks as quickly as possible, wasting limited time on other things. This is also why for example High Voltage and Overpowered Missiles are taken, as these combine both generating Arcane Salvo stacks and Arcane Charges at the same time, allowing you to generate more Prismatic Bolts.

In terms of actual playstyle changes to maximize this, the main way we play around it, is that we do not always try to get maximum Arcane Salvo stacks, when gaining more stacks would be relatively inefficient. For example, When you have 12 or more Arcane Salvo stacks, and a way to generate Arcane Charges (for example via Arcane Orb), you can already use Arcane Barrage to try to generate a Prismatic Bolt proc. This on average generates more Prismatic Bolt procs than getting to 25 Salvo stacks via Arcane Blast.

Arcane Surge is Arcane's primary DPS cooldown. It has a 90 second cooldown, and when used drains all of your mana for one big hit on your target and nearby enemies, dealing damage based on the mana spent. However, the real benefit comes after the initial cast, where it increases all your spell damage by a massive 35% for 15 seconds, while also greatly increasing your mana regeneration, which basically regenerates your mana to full mana during its duration.

Generally, you will want to use Arcane Surge immediately as it comes up, but it can be beneficial to delay it in certain cases, for example if your group is about to use Time Warp or a similar effect soon, or an important raid mechanic that needs high DPS is coming soon, or additional targets that come up, etc.

Touch of the Magi is a 45 second cooldown, which applies a debuff to your target, which accumulates 20% of all damage you deal to the target for 12 seconds, and then exploding for all of the accumulated damage to the target and nearby enemies. It also grants 4 Arcane Charges, making it so that you can use it immediately on the pull without needing to build up stacks.

Touch of the Magi and Arcane Surge have very tight timings, with Touch of the Magi having exactly half the cooldown of Arcane Surge. Since the timing is so close, it is critical you use Touch of the Magi as soon as it comes up, so you do not run into a situation where Touch of the Magi is not ready when Arcane Surge is.

Time Warp is an ability which buffs your entire party or raid group within 100 yards with 30% haste for 40 seconds. This buff is shared with multiple other spells like Bloodlust and Heroism. These all put a debuff on all your group members which blocks them from getting the effect again for 10 minutes, so you cannot get this same effect from multiple sources multiple times.

As Time Warp applies to the whole group, it is generally decided by the raid or party leader when it is used, to optimize usage for the whole group, instead of just using it when it is best for your personal usage. However, if there is no assigned time or you are in a pick up group without any real leadership in terms of strategy, it is generally a safe practice to use Time Warp right after combat starts so it is up while everyone has all of their DPS cooldowns ready. Of course make sure to only do this if there will be enemies active for the entire 40 second duration of the buff on the pull, as on some fights bosses might go inactive or do some kind of phase change early on in the fight.