Arcane Mage Leveling Guide from 1 to 80 — The War Within (11.1.0)
On this page, you will find our Level by Level Arcane Mage leveling guide for The War Within. Make sure to use the slider to make the guide adapt to your level. For more general leveling information, please refer to our Mage leveling guide.
Arcane Mage Leveling Guide for The War Within
Arcane Mage Leveling Playstyle
Arcane Mage, is very strong at outdoor content due to having basically infinite mana due to the downtime while doing outdoor content. Due to this, it can effectively 1 shot most outdoor enemies by simply staying at 4 Arcane Charges all the time. Due to this, simply questing is a very effective way of leveling.
Having said that, Arcane is also very strong at dungeon content, doing incredible DPS, especially starting around level 40 when you start getting most of the kit unlocked. If you have some friends (especially a tank or healer) to queue up with, spamming dungeons is very efficient. If you are playing solo, the queue time for dungeons as a DPS makes it impractical.
Leveling Gear for Arcane Mage
When leveling up, always choose the piece of loot with the highest item level. The only exception to this rule is if you have a Ring or Necklace with a slightly lower item level, but 2 secondary stats on it instead of 1.
Level by Level Rotation and Talents
Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!
Below, you can see the suggested levelling talent build and the order in which to pick the talents while levelling. The below build is incredible for both dungeons and outdoor content.
Rotation to Level Up as an Arcane Mage
Starting at Level 1, you only have one main attack
ability: Frostbolt.
- Make sure you keep
Arcane Intellect up at all times. Keep in mind, if you die, you have to re-cast it. Otherwise just cast it once per hour.
- Cast
Time Warp when you are about to go into a big pull or boss fight. Keep in mind, you can only gain the benefit once every 10 minutes, even though the cooldown is 5 minutes.
- During
Arcane Soul (the buff you get after
Arcane Surge ends from
Memory of Al'ar) cast
Arcane Barrage.
- Use
Fire Blast on cooldown.
- Cast
Arcane Orb when you do not have 4 Arcane Charges.
- Cast
Shifting Power when your other spells are on cooldown. Try to use it outside of combat, while moving to the next enemies.
- Cast
Evocation whenever it is ready to activate the large Intellect bonus. Use this shortly before activating
Arcane Surge. Try to use it out of combat, while moving to the next enemies.
- Cast
Arcane Surge whenever it is ready and you have 4 Arcane Charges. Make sure
Touch of the Magi is ready before using Arcane Surge.
- Cast
Arcane Barrage whenever
Intuition procs.
- Cast
Arcane Barrage when you have
Glorious Incandescence. (the proc right after
Burden of Power)
- If
Touch of the Magi is ready and you have 4 Arcane Charges, Cast
Arcane Barrage, immediately followed by Touch of the Magi. Ensure you cast Touch of the Magi before Arcane Barrage lands.
- Use
Arcane Missiles when you get
Clearcasting.
- Cast
Arcane Barrage whenever you have 4 Arcane Charges, and there are 3+ targets to hit with it. Additionally, whenever you are close to running out of Mana, cast Arcane Barrage. Only cast it with 4 Arcane Charges.
- Cast
Arcane Explosion when there are 3 or more targets.
- Cast
Arcane Blast as your filler on single target.
Arcane Mage War Mode Talents for Leveling
In this section we will rank the PvP talents best for leveling and doing solo / small group PvE content.
Chrono Shift is a huge mobility increase and helps a lot with kiting enemies in the open world.
Temporal Shield is arguably the best defensive tool in the game, as it is off the global cooldown, and has a relatively short cooldown, allowing you to avoid damage against most enemies you face.
Master of Escape and
Mass Invisibility are both spells that you can pick to help you skip more mobs when going through crowded areas.
Congratulations!
Congratulations on reaching Level 80! Now that you have hit Level 80, we recommend looking at our Easy mode page and Talents section to learn how to play at max level.
Changelog
- 24 Feb. 2025: Updated talents and rotation for 11.1 changes.
- 15 Dec. 2024: Updated for Patch 11.0.7.
- 21 Oct. 2024: Updated for 11.0.5 rework and slightly simplified rotation.
- 09 Sep. 2024: Updated rotation to no longer double-dip Burden of Power due to removal.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Updated for The War Within.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
- 12 May 2024: Updated talents and rotation slightly.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Season 4.
- 19 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.2
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7
- 11 Jul. 2023: Upated levelling tree for the new talent trees.
- 01 May 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Minor changes to levelling tree.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 24 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Mage Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Dutchmagoz. Dutchmagoz is a Mythic raider in one of the top raiding guilds, Turtles and the owner of the Mage Discord server, Altered Time, where he is involved in all things Mage, and you can reach out to him directly for feedback or questions about the guide.
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