TBC Classic Arcane Mage Spell Summary

Arcane Mages offer a variety of useful buffs for themselves and the group they play in. These buffs can be used to increase stats, damage and healing taken, Critical Strike chance, and Mana regeneration. Other buffs decrease spell damage and healing taken. The armor buffs are only castable on the Mage, while the other buffs listed below can be cast on any group member.

Arcane Intellect — Increases Intellect on the target.

Arcane Brilliance — Increases Intellect of everyone in the target's group. Requires one Arcane Powder to be cast and Tome of Arcane Brilliance 2 to be learned.

Dampen Magic — Buffs the target to decrease magic damage and healing taken. Can be enhanced with Arcane talents. Very niche use.

Amplify Magic — Buffs the target to increase magic damage and healing taken. Can be enhanced with Arcane talents. Useful on players that take physical damage only or almost exclusively physical damage, but niche use.

Molten Armor — Increases the Mage's chance to critically hit with spells by 3%, deals 75 Fire damage per hit to melee attackers, decreases the chance to be critically hit by 5%. Can be enhanced with Fire talents to affect ranged and spell attacks as well.

Mage Armor — Increases magic resistance and allows 30% of the Mage's Mana regeneration to continue while casting.

Ice Armor — Increases the Mage's Armor and Frost resistance and slows enemy melee attackers. Can be enhanced by Frost talents.

Mages are sought after for their crowd controlling abilities, such as Polymorphing enemies and Frost exclusive slowing and freezing effects. Further, they supply their group and themselves with fresh water and food and open portals to all major cities of each faction. Mages can also remove curses from allies and magic from enemies.

Polymorph — With this spell, humanoids, critters and beasts can be turned into a sheep for a certain amount of time. This effect can end before its maximum time has passed. Through the Fragmented Magic quest and the Tome of Polymorph: Turtle book, enemies can also be turned into a pig or a turtle, which is of course a very nice cosmetic upgrade.

Conjure Water — Conjures water, usable by friendly players. Conjured items disappear from the inventory after logging out for 15 minutes or more. The highest rank can be learned from Tome of Conjure Water IX, which drops in high level dungeons.

Conjure Food — Conjures food, usable by friendly players. Conjured items disappear from the inventory after logging out for 15 minutes or more. The highest rank can be learned from Tome of Conjure Food VIII, which drops in high level dungeons.

Ritual of Refreshment — Creates a portal two friendly players need to click in order to make a table appear. Costs 2 Arcane Powder. Each player can take up to 80 Conjured Manna Biscuits from this table. Conjured items disappear from the inventory after logging out for 15 minutes or more. This spell can only be learned after learning the two highest ranks of Conjure Water and Conjure Food from the books.

Conjure Mana Emerald — A Mage can create 5 different types of Mana gems, which can be used in combat to restore Mana. The highest rank of this spell restores most Mana and has, contrary to all other ranks, three charges.

Teleport Spells: Every Mage can teleport to it's faction's major cities at the cost of one Rune of Teleportation.

Portal Spells: These spells are used to open portals to each faction's major cities the whole group can use. Costs 1 Rune of Portals.

Invisibility — The Mage fades out for 5 seconds and becomes invisible after that time. Each second before becoming invisible, the threat against all enemies is reduced by 20%. Any damage taken or action from the Mage cancels the spell. This can be used as a threat dump, to leave combat, or to sneak by enemies.

Evocation — A channeled spell that restores 60% of your Mana during 8 seconds. Haste effects make the channeling faster and damage taken while channeling reduces the Mana restored.

Spellsteal — Sometimes enemies have beneficial magical buffs you can steal with this ability. Stolen buffs last on you for two minutes. Some bosses, such as High King Maulgar require one Mage to steal a magical buff from an enemy, in order to be able to tank it.

Counterspell — This spell is used to interrupt enemy casting and to prevent any spell of the interrupted spell school from being cast for 8 seconds.

Blink — Teleports the Mage 20 yards forward. This ability can be used to reposition during fights and save some running time, flee from enemies, break snaring effects or to prevent fall damage by Blinking shortly before reaching the ground.

Slow Fall — At the cost of one Light Feather, Mages can reduce their falling speed for 30 seconds. This can be used to survive falling down, or to move to locations normally unreachable, by jumping from a higher ledge to a lower position. Can be cast before mounting and it will persist while mounted.

Remove Lesser Curse — Removes a curse from a friendly target.

Slow — Exclusively available to Arcane Mages, reduces the target's movement speed and time between ranged attacks by 50%. This ability also increases the casting time of the target by 50%. Lasts 15 seconds, only one target at a time can be affected by this spell.

Presence of Mind — Makes your next Mage spell with less than 10 seconds casting time an instant spell. Can be used for utility to conjure Mana Gems or to instantly Polymorph enemies.

Frost Nova — Freezes enemies 8 yards around the Mage for 8 seconds.

Improved Blizzard — This ability can be used to control groups of enemies by slowing their movement speed. It is a utility spell, if it is required to buy time before mobs reach the group or the Mage.

Arcane Mages use different offensive abilities than Fire or Frost Mages. Some of these abilities are required for rotations or need to be used with special attention. To learn more about the rotation and how these abilities synergize, read the Arcane Mage Rotations page.

Arcane Blast — Your main source of damage. Arcane Blast, also referred to as "AB", receives 10% Hit from your talents and gives you a stacking debuff. Each debuff increases the Mana cost of Arcane Blast by 146 and reduces it's cast time by 0.3 seconds. It stacks up to three times and will make your Arcane Blast cost 633.5 (rounded to 634) Mana per 1.5 seconds. The debuff drops after 8 seconds or when you Ice Block. With Arcane Power, Arcane Blast costs 30% more base Mana. The base Mana cost of Arcane Blast is 195 and 30% of that is 58.5. Therefore, a fully stacked 1.5s Arcane Blast with Arcane Power (AP) has a total Mana cost of 692 (633.5+58.5).

Frostbolt — This is the filler spell you cast when low on Mana. It receives 6% Spell Hit from Elemental Precision instead of 3%. Your target takes damage and will get slowed. Arcane Mages also call this ability "FrB", especially when they talk about rotations.

Arcane Missiles — An alternative filler spell for players who decide going for a deep Arcane spec. Launches an Arcane Missile at your enemy each second for 5 seconds.

Blizzard — Slows enemy targets by up to 75% for up to 4.5 seconds, if fully talented. While it is not the highest damage Mage AoE ability, it is very useful to slow down groups of enemies. Arcane Mages can choose between a slowing Blizzard and more single target damage for Frostbolt in their spec.

Cone of Cold — A frontal cone AoE ability that does high damage and slows enemies for up to 11 seconds with the Permafrost talent.

Fire Blast — An instant cast ability, mostly used while running, as it does more damage than Ice Lance. Can also be used as a last hit on a low health enemy, as this spell is instant and has no travel time.

Arcane Explosion — The main AoE spell. Generates very low threat with the Arcane Subtlety talent.

Presence of Mind — Makes your next Mage spell with less than 10 seconds casting time an instant spell. This spell can be used to make a damage spell instant or to extend the Arcane Blast debuff.

Arcane Power — Increases the damage of your spells by 30%, but they cost 30% more Mana to cast. Lasts 15 seconds and has a 3 minutes cooldown. Can be used together with Icy Veins or Bloodlust/Heroism. Preferably used with Arcane Blast.

Icy Veins — Increases your casting speed by 20% for 20 seconds. During the duration of Icy Veins, your spells are no longer subject to spell pushback. Preferably used with Arcane Blast.

Cold Snap — Resets the cooldown of all Frost abilities, which enables you to use Icy Veins twice in a row. This ability makes your DPS skyrocket in short fights.

Every Mage spec has good defensive capabilities. They can absorb damage from different sources and even become immune to damage.

Fire Ward — Absorbs Fire Damage.

Frost Ward — Absorbs Frost Damage.

Mana Shield — Absorbs physical and magical damage at the cost of Mana.

Ice Block — Puts the Mage in an Ice Block for 10 seconds, making it immune to almost all attacks and spells. Some boss abilities can penetrate the Ice Block immunity and Priests can dispel Ice Block with Mass Dispel. This ability can also be used to protect the caster from fall damage. After using Ice Block, you get the Hypothermia debuff that prevents you from using Ice Block again for 30 seconds.