Arcane Mage Battleground Blitz Guide — The War Within (Season 1)

The main role of an Arcane Mage in battleground blitz is to use relentless single-target damage on enemies to quickly force kills and crowd control with Polymorph. To keep your team offensive, you will use Time Warp when your team has cooldowns and follow this up with Polymorph on enemy healers or DPS if they will not take damage to break it. If teams try to setup kills on you use Ice Block to ensure you stay alive.

In addition to damage and crowd controlling, you will also be slowing every enemy you can with Slow and Ice Nova. This is a crucial part of the Mage toolkit for battleground blitz. If you are able to slow enemies when they are on their way to a base and your team is able to pass them, your team will likely get the base.

Here is the talent build you will be using to maximize your damage output:

• Chrono Shift
• Master Shepherd
• Temporal Shield

These are the 3 PvP talents you should be using in battleground blitz. Chrono Shift causes Arcane Barrage to slow enemies and increases your movement speed. This is another tool you have to slow enemies that might be trying to get to another base. Master Shepherd increases your speed and versatility when someone is Polymorphed. Another great tool for getting to bases quicker. Finally, Temporal Shield is an extra defensive for you, as you can quickly become the target for enemy teams.

For a more in-depth breakdown of talents, read the talents section of this guide:

In Battleground Blitz, without the Arena Dampening effect, healers, when left alone, are able to sustain against many players with relative ease. The way to counter the high throughput of healers in Battleground Blitz is with the effective use of crowd control.

Mage has many tools in its kit to aid with this:

• Polymorph
• Slow
• Dragon's Breath
• Arcane Barrage slows with Chrono Shift
• Blast Wave

Note: Be careful with Polymorph! This will dispel all DoTs on the target, and you could be removing quite a bit of damage if you have an Affliction Warlock or Shadow Priest on your team.

Ice Block is your main defensive ability. If you have run out of Shimmers and have no other ways to kite or survive, use this spell. This will protect you from all damage.

A Mage's crowd control is effectively a defensive technique for them. If the enemy team is using their offensive cooldowns, you can kite them by using Slow or by casting Polymorph and Blinking away.

Temporal Shield is one of the best defensive cooldowns Arcane Mages have. Use this when you are being focused and when at high health. Once Temporal Shield expires, you will be healed for all the damage you took while it was active. It is important to use this right before a stun or right when the enemy team is using their burst cooldowns. Do not use it too late, though, as if you are at low health, you will probably die before you are healed. Be aware this ability is also affected by dampening.

Alter Time may seem like a confusing ability at first, but it is really straightforward. The first time you press this ability, it remembers how much health you have and your location. The second time you press it, it will return to the same location with the exact health you had when you first pressed it. This should be used when you feel like you are about to take damage or about to be stunned.

Although Mirror Image deals damage and slows enemies, it should primarily be used as a defensive cooldown. While the images are active, you take 20% less damage. Taking direct damage will break 1 of the 3 mirrors. If the images stay alive for the entire duration, you will get this damage reduction for 40 seconds! Use this when you do not have Alter Time and you see the enemy using their burst cooldowns.

Prismatic Barrier has also been given to Arcane Mages. This is a slightly weaker form of Ice Barrier. However, it is very strong against caster teams, reducing all harmful magic damage dealt to you and reducing the duration of harmful magic effects by 35%.

Blast Wave is a knockback that gives Mages an additional way to get away from melee players. Use this when melee have connected you with heavy damage cooldowns or you need to kite and run. Talented into the Volatile Detonation talent allows Blast Wave to send enemies extremely far away and can even be used to knock off maps like Arathi Basin and Eye of the Storm

Remove Curse removes all curses from a friendly target. This can remove important debuffs like Hex or Agony.

1. Intellect;
2. Haste;
3. Versatility;
4. Mastery;
5. Critical Strike.

The stat priority for Arcane Mage is the same in Battleground Blitz and Arena. If you want an in-depth explanation and suggestions on gear, read the gearing section of this guide:

On both Warsong Gulch and Twin Peaks, if you are defending your own flag carrier, you should encourage them to take high ground on the upstairs ledges so you can protect them with Blast Wave.

Similarly, when attacking enemy bases, you should look to knock players off the high ground. You can do that either to make sure that your teammates can attack the enemy flag carrier or to separate the flag carrier from their healers.

Due to Arcane Mage having incredibly high single-target damage, your primary goal in capture the flag maps is to play offense. This means that when an enemy player picks up your flag, you should be trying to kill that flag carrier. Quickly leave the team fight when this happens and setup kills on the enemy team's defense. Utilize tools like Slow and Ice Nova to slow the flag carrier and Polymorph on the enemy healers. For an in-depth guide to Arcane Mage damage rotations, read here:

Before a Resource Race battleground starts, you should decide with your team which base you should focus on first.

• If there is an enemy healer at the base you are assigned to, then you should crowd control them as soon as possible and use your burst cooldowns to kill their teammates
• If there is no healer but there is more than one DPS enemy, you should use your crowd control on the one who your team is less likely to attack (as they would break your crowd control)

Your primary goal on resource race maps is simple: capture nodes and slow enemies. Polymorph lasts 6 seconds, and it takes 4 seconds to capture a node. This means that if an enemy is alone at a base, you should easily be able to take it. Always pay attention to who is at which base. You will also want to slow any enemies who may be trying to help their teammates at a base. Utilize your multiple slows and Polymorph to prevent any enemies from providing backup to their team.

Similar to resource race maps, your goal is to capture any nodes and slow enemies who might be trying to help if they are falling behind. The goal on this map, unlike normal Rated Battlegrounds, is to team fight at one node and try to cap both bases. This results in long 7v7 team fights, and the winner will more than likely pull ahead quickly. Trade your defensives when you get low ( Ice Block, Alter Time, etc.) and get value out of Dragon's Breath/ Polymorph on enemy players.

Note: Capping the flag will make the inactive bases active, and both teams will have to recap the nodes. Use this tactic if your team is falling behind on points or lost the team fight.

Ranged DPS specializations will always be the best orb carriers on Temple of Kotmogu, so you should be one of the first players to get an Orb if there is one available. The most important part about this map is to win the initial team fight and quickly gain momentum by grabbing 3 orbs and standing in the middle of the map. When the enemy team starts to resurrect, leave middle and kite around the center. Here are some tips for this map:

• Players take more damage the longer they hold the orb. This means that, eventually, the Orb carriers will die. Ideally, your team will only hold 2-3 orbs at a time so that you do not easily wipe when you have high stacks.
• Make sure you die on the correct side of the map! You and your team will resurrect depending on where you died. If you die on purple side, you will resurrect on blue side and vise versa. Ensuring you and your team resurrect together is crucial, this will allow you to regroup faster and quickly wipe the enemy team that will be weak.