Season of Discovery Arcane Mage DPS Talents and Runes
On this page, you will find out the best PvE talents for your Arcane Mage in WoW Classic — Season of Discovery, as well as advised runes.
Arcane Mage DPS Talent Build
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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.
Recommended Rune Engravings
- 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!
Notable Arcane Mage Talents
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!
Changelog
- 10 Jul. 2024: Updated for Phase 4.
- 02 Apr. 2024: Updated talents, runes and explanation text for Phase 4.
- 08 Feb. 2024: Updated talents, runes and explanation text for Phase 2.
- 15 Dec. 2023: Removed mention of talents only accesible in later phases.
- 09 Dec. 2023: New recommended talents to account for BFD bosses only being MaxLevel +2, drastically lowering their Hit cap.
More Classic Mage Guides
More Season of Discovery Class Guides
Classic Dungeon Guides
Classic Profession Guides
Classic Reputation Guides
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This guide has been written by Seksi, original vanilla player and multi-class player, currently playing on Gehennas Horde. You can find him on the Classic Warrior, Mage and Shaman Discords, as well as the Icy Veins Discord.
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