Season of Discovery Arcane Mage DPS Talents and Runes

The listed talents are very straightforward, and the goal is to maximize the boost to Balefire Bolt, which benefits from all trees and most support Runes, making it a monster ability, especially in short fights where you will not reach the 9 stacks and have to stop casting it.

• Gloves — Arcane Blast
• Pants — Icy Veins (ST) or Living Flame (AoE)
• Chest — Burnout
• Waist — Missile Barrage
• Feet — Spell Power
• Head — Advanced Warding
• Wrist — Balefire Bolt
• Back — Arcane Barrage
• Ring — Frost Specialization
• Ring — Arcane Specialization

The great thing about Arcane Mage is that you can swap between healer and DPS by just changing your Runes; going into Regeneration or Mass Regeneration is enough to get a lot of focused healing done on your Temporal Beacon target while still doing a lot of damage!

Icy Veins should be used instead of Living Flame in single-target heavy fights or against moving targets where Living Flame has a hard time dealing damage.

Missile Barrage is a great damage increase and, just as important, a way to use Arcane Blast stacks frequently without destroying your Mana pool in the process, although you can now also use Arcane Barrage for the same purpose. Burnout is taken for its great synergy with Spell Power, Ignite, and Ice Shards.

Advanced Warding improves your emergency defensive shields, and Balefire Bolt deals a lot of damage and will be your main offensive ability, especially in short fights.

Make sure to check our Mage Rune guide in order to learn where to get all the SoD runes!

The Arcane tree is full of utility goodies for Mages, including very powerful damage boosting talents at the end of the tree.

Arcane Focus gives you 10% free Spell Hit for Arcane spells, which is a simple, but powerful, bonus!

Improved Arcane Missiles gives you up to 100% less cast time delay from damage on Arcane Missiles. Strong whenever you are being focused, but also a weak use of points if you are not the main focus target for enemies.

Arcane Concentration allows Clearcasting to happen after 10% of your casts, which saves a ton of Mana over time and allows gameplay such as using weaker, cheaper spells to proc it, followed by your strongest, most expensive spell.

Presence of Mind makes your next spell instant-cast, but only once every 3-minutes. This can be used to deal burst damage with Arcane Blast and other longer cast time spells, or to instantly crowd control an enemy with Polymorph, for example.

Arcane Power increases your damage by 30% but makes them also cost 30% more Mana, and only lasts 15 seconds, with a 3-minute cooldown. This is a very powerful boost to your damage and converted healing.

The Fire and Frost trees are not too interesting, but Ignite and Ice Shards are still worth picking for extra DPS with Balefire Bolt.

Ignite allows your critical strikes to create a damage over time effect on the target for 40% extra damage over 4 seconds. This damage over time effect has its duration reset and grows for each additional critical strike landed while it is active.

Ice Shards increase your critical strike damage, which has great synergy with Ignite on spells that benefit from all effects at once like Balefire Bolt!