Season of Discovery Arcane Mage Healer Talents and Runes

Mages heal by dealing damage, which is converted to healing with the new Temporal Beacon mechanic. This can placed on a target with Regeneration or on many targets with Mass Regeneration.

You can also burst heal for free with Rewind Time on a target that had your beacon for at least 5 seconds, which is a great way to catch up on damage while not taxing your Mana pool!

As the healing is not split, you can ramp up for big raid damage events by setting up multiple beacons and then using your damage cooldowns, or stay Mana conservative by having only a few beacons out on important targets such as the tank instead.

While the Arcane tree is very straightforward, as there are not many useful damage-increasing talents, a significant adjustment you can do to our proposed talents above is dropping Magic Attunement and some points of Arcane Focus in order to pick up Improved Arcane Missiles. While this will generally not be needed with the new Missile Barrage Rune, getting even a single pushback and losing Missiles as a result can be extremely punishing in some encounters.

Points into Wand Specialization should no longer be needed now that there are more Mana-conscious options to spend Arcane Blast charges on at high stacks.

Finally, due to the introduction of Balefire Bolt which deals Arcane, Frost and Fire damage, picking up Ignite and Ice Shards is a good idea, as you will be able to get a strong DPS boost out of it.

• Gloves — Arcane Blast
• Pants — Mass Regeneration (Area Healing) or Icy Veins (DPS)
• Chest — Enlightenment
• Waist — Missile Barrage
• Feet — Spell Power (DPS / Area Healing) or Chronostatic Preservation (ST Healing)
• Head — Advanced Warding
• Wrist — Rewind Time (Healing) or Balefire Bolt (DPS)
• Back — Arcane Barrage
• Ring — Fire Specialization
• Ring — Arcane Specialization

The great thing about Mage Healer is that you can swap between healer and DPS by just changing your runes; taking the Regeneration or Mass Regeneration alone is enough to get a lot of focused healing done into your Temporal Beacon targets while still doing a lot of damage!

Your area healing will be much better if you also take Mass Regeneration, and Chronostatic Preservation is a huge single target heal once charged, but neither is strictly necessary for all encounters.

Unfortunately Living Flame and Arcane Explosion convert 80% less healing than single target damage spells to your Temporal Beacons, making them pure Area DPS options.

Advanced Warding can provide some Temporal Beacon-independent shielding ahead of dangerous raid damage mechanics. Balefire Bolt deals a lot of damage, which converts to healing, and is a decent way to spend Arcane Blast stacks or just DPS during downtime, especially if Missile Barrage is refusing to proc. Arcane Barrage can now also be used to heal on the move or as a way to discharge Arcane Blast stacks on demand.

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 very powerful bonus!

Wand Specialization is a decent damage and healing increase as Arcane damage wands, such as Greater Magic Wand, are now allowed to contribute towards Temporal Beacon healing.

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. For now this does not work with healing runes such as Mass Regeneration, but that is something likely to be changed in the future so keep an eye out!

Presence of Mind makes your next spell be instantly 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!