WotLK Classic Arcane Mage Enchants and Consumables

Arcane Mage uses mostly the same consumables and enchants as Fire Mage and Frost Mage, however, they use different glyphs. In raids, you will be expected to bring the required consumables, as they are quite affordable in WotLK. The Arcane Mage stats page below gives you more information on why which stat and consumable is preferred.

Slot	Enchantment
Head	Arcanum of Burning Mysteries from Kirin Tor (Revered)
Shoulders	Greater Inscription of the Storm or Master's Inscription of the Storm from Sons of Hodir (Exalted) or Inscription
Back	Lightweave Embroidery from Tailoring > Springy Arachnoweave from Engineering > Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed
Chest	Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats
Wrists	Enchant Bracers - Superior Spellpower
Gloves	Hyperspeed Accelerators from Engineering > Enchant Gloves - Exceptional Spellpower
Waist	Eternal Belt Buckle from Blacksmithing (usable by non-Blacksmiths) and Frag Belt from Engineering — these enhancements stack
Legs	Sanctified Spellthread (Tailoring only) or Brilliant Spellthread from Tailoring (usable by anyone but more expensive)
Feet	Nitro Boosts from Engineering > Enchant Boots - Icewalker or Enchant Boots - Tuskarr's Vitality, depending on personal preference
Finger	Enchant Ring - Greater Spellpower (Enchanting only)
One-Handed Weapons	Enchant Weapon - Mighty Spellpower ≥ Enchant Weapon - Black Magic
Staves	Enchant Staff - Greater Spellpower

Like all other Mage specs, Arcane mages prefer Spell Power gems in red sockets. The Missile Barrage procs more often, the more spells you cast. Therefore increasing the amount of casts with Haste is what makes Haste/Spell Power gems best for yellow Sockets. For blue sockets, Arcane Mages take Spell Power/Spirit gems. For the exact gem names, see the table below.

From Tier 8 on, for most items it is best to acquire the socket bonus, unless it is a stat like Spirit, Mp5 or Stamina. To confirm the best gems for your gear, you need to use the Osthyvel Mage Sim and sim your gear. When simming for the best gems, make sure to use 100k iterations, because with less iterations the variance of the sim result is higher.

For your Best in Slot gear, make sure to use epic quality gems (available from T9 onwards) for maximum performance. If you want to save a little bit of gold on your pre raid gear, unsing rare quality gems may be an option. However, the worse your gear is, the bigger the effect of using epic gems will be.

Color	Rare Version	Epic Version	Comment
Meta	Chaotic Skyflare Diamond		Best Meta Gem. Requires two blue, purple, or green gems to activate.
Red	Runed Scarlet Ruby	Runed Cardinal Ruby Runed Dragon's Eye Runed Stormjewel (Unique)	Best Red Gem. Runed Dragon's Eye is for Jewelcrafters only. From Phase 2 onwards, Runed Stormjewel is a rare drop from Bag of Fishing Treasures; this bag is a quest reward from the fishing daily quests that Marcia Chase in Dalaran offers.
Blue	Purified Twilight Opal	Purified Dreadstone	Best Blue Gem unless you need Hit from a green gem.
Orange	Veiled Monarch Topaz Reckless Monarch Topaz	Veiled Ametrine Reckless Ametrine	Best Yellow Gem. Veiled when you need Hit, Reckless if not.
Yellow	Rigid Autumn's Glow	Rigid King's Amber Rigid Dragon's Eye	Usually worse than Orange gems. Dragon's Eye is for Jewelcrafters only.
Green	Vivid Forest Emerald Forceful Forest Emerald	Vivid Eye of Zul Forceful Eye of Zul	Usually the last choice for Hit/Haste. Try to avoid this gem.

Glyph of Arcane Blast, Glyph of Arcane Missiles, and Glyph of Molten Armor (Major), and Glyph of Arcane Intellect + Glyph of Slow Fall (Minor) are the glyphs of choice for Arcane Mage. Most of the time Glyph of Fire Ward or Glyph of Frost Ward is the best third minor glyph. They can be adjusted for the current raid tier, depending on which ward is used more often. For more information about all available Arcane Mage glyphs, the Mage Talents Guide has a more in-depth glyphs section:

Most raids put down a Fish Feast before an encounter, if not you should use Tender Shoveltusk Steak, or Firecracker Salmon. These provide you with 46 Spell damage and 40 Stamina for 1 hour. If you lack Hit rating, Snapper Extreme provides you with 40 Hit Rating and Stamina. Since Arcane is easily hit capped, you will most likely use one of the first three food buffs.

The best Alchemy consumable available is Flask of the Frost Wyrm. There is also an Intellect flask, and elixir combinations, however, even for Arcane as a spec that makes good use of Intellect, these alternatives are by far worse than the Frost Wyrm flask.

Due to the interactions with the Missile Barrage talent Potion of Speed clearly is the best potion you can use, unless you reach the global cooldown cap. A weakaura to track your global cooldown, such as the Fojji - Mage Haste/GCD Edit mentioned in our Mage Addons Guide, can help you to not overcap Haste with this potion. You might want to desync Icy Veins, Haste trinkets, Hyperspeed Accelerators and Berserking with this potion during Bloodlust/Heroism, or use a Potion of Wild Magic (most of the time this will be worse than desyncing cooldowns!) if you find yourself hard Haste capped. The Mage Sim lets you set up cooldowns and sim for the perfect cooldown stacking pattern, based on your gear and raid.

Runic Mana Injector (with Engineering you gain bonus Mana), and Runic Mana Potion are best used between trash packs, if you have mana issues and cannot use Evocation and/or Mana Sapphire. Mana Sapphire, Scroll of Spirit VIII (if no Priest with Divine Spirit is around), Fel Healthstone and Heavy Frostweave Bandage belong to your standard consumable repertoire. Have the latter key bound if you need to heal up!

Macroing the speed/wild magic potion, mana gems, and Healthstones helps you to stick to the ABC-rule (Always Be Casting) and works like that:

• #showtooltip
• /use Mana Sapphire
• /cast Arcane Blast
• /cqs

Where you replace the 'Mana Sapphire' with the other items' names.

Greater Rune of Warding and Dark Runes/ Demonic Runes are rather niche. While the Mana Runes restore mana on a 15-minute cooldown and a 2-minute shared cooldown (after using one, you have to wait 2 minutes to use the other), the Rune of Warding gives you a small chance to absorb a little bit of Physical damage (useful when taking cleave damage). These consumables do not hurt, but they are also one thing more to focus on during a raid, making them more of min-max consumes. The Mana runes may can help you to overcome the time until your next Evocation or Mana Gem is ready.

Engineering is the strongest profession for any DPS class in WotLK, you should level it! The strong enchants provide excellent utility and Global Thermal Sapper Charge + Saronite Bomb give you additional damage. Both items do not induce a global cooldown, so make sure to use them with another ability in a macro like this:

• #showtooltip Saronite Bomb
• /use [@cursor] Saronite Bomb
• /cast Arcane Blast
• /cqs

Alternatively you can also throw the Saronite Bomb at your own position while using Arcane Explosion. To do that, simply change the above macro to [@player] and Arcane Explosion. The Sapper Charge will automatically damage units around you but will also work best in a macro:

• #showtooltip Global Thermal Sapper Charge
• /use Global Thermal Sapper Charge
• /cast Arcane Explosion
• /cqs

Our Macros guide gives you more information on how to write macros: