Mage Hero Talents — The War Within (11.2)

This page is specifically about Hero Talents in The War Within. If you want to learn more about the best regular talents for Arcane Mage, check out our Talents page:

Sunfury and Spellslinger are close when it comes to single-target damage, with Sunfury being slightly ahead (around 3-5%). This is the case both with and without the new Tier Set bonus from 11.2. On cleave, they are extremely close, both with and without the tier set.

Due to this, in raid, you can play either hero spec and perform very similarly, so it mostly comes down to personal preference. As Sunfury is slightly easier to play and slightly ahead, we recommend it, however, if you prefer the Spellslinger playstyle, you can play it without giving up too much performance.

Spellslinger and Sunfury are almost identical when it comes to Mythic+ damage. In AoE, both are practically equal damage, with Sunfury being slightly ahead on boss damage, and being slightly easier to play. Due to this, Sunfury is slightly favoured for Mythic+, but the difference is pretty minimal, so you can generally play whatever you prefer.

2.

Best Hero Talent Builds for Arcane Mage

Sunfury Hero Talent Build Spellslinger Hero Talent Build

Sunfury currently has one setup for all situations, as it simply provides the best DPS in both AoE and single-target situations.

Spellslinger currently has one setup for all situations, as it simply provides the best DPS in both AoE and single-target situations.

Sunfury has meaningful impact on the rotation for Arcane. It gives Arcane multiple additional ways to quickly get 4 Arcane Charges back. The way this plays out in the full rotation is quite complex, but at a high level, it allows you to dump Arcane Charges more often with Arcane Barrage and then immediately get the charges back again.

The main rotational change comes from Burden of Power and Glorious Incandescence. Burden of Power is a damage increase to your next Arcane Blast or Arcane Barrage, but Glorious Glorious Incandescence, which procs immediately after consuming Burden of Power, makes your next Arcane Barrage immediately give you back 4 Arcane Charges. This allows you to quickly dump Arcane Charges via Arcane Barrage and immediately get them back again. There are various small optimizations around this, but generally you simply use Arcane Barrage whenever you have Glorious Incandescence.

The other rotational change is around Memory of Al'ar. This causes a bunch of passive benefits to Arcane Surge, however, it also gives you the Arcane Soul buff when Arcane Surge expires. This buff gives you effectively infinite 4 Arcane Charges for the duration. While the buff is up, you simply want to spam Arcane Barrage until you have 3 Clearcasting stacks, at which point you want to consume a stack of Clearcasting to avoid overcapping on it, and then go back to using Arcane Barrage. If Arcane Soul is about to time out, you can ignore the rule on 3 Clearcasting stacks and throw out an additional Arcane Barrage even if it would overcap Clearcasting.

Spellslinger has various small rotational changes:

No single talent in the Spellslinger has meaningful impact on the rotation, however, combining all of them together Spellslinger gets a lot of Arcane Orb damage. Due to the extra damage provided by various Hero Talents, it is worth picking up Orb Barrage from the Arcane tree, which, combined with Spellfrost Teachings provide a lot of additional Arcane Orbs. Combined with the extra damage of Arcane Orb, casting Arcane Orb also becomes beneficial on single-target, allowing you to dump Arcane Charges and get them back with either a manually cast Arcane Orb, or an automatically fired one from Orb Barrage.

All these interactions together end up in a fast paced rotation that can dump Arcane Charges via Arcane Barrage much more aggressively than Sunfury can, especially on AoE. This is also one of the reasons why Spellslinger does so much AoE damage.