Arcane Mage DPS Battle of Dazar'alor Raid Guide — Dragonflight 10.2.5

This page will be a rough outline of the bosses and mechanics in Battle of Dazar'alor (BoD). This page will focus primarily on how an Arcane Mage can optimize its performance on the raid bosses in BoD, and not on an actual raid strategy for the bosses. For full raid strategies and mechanics, we suggest you check out our Battle of Dazar'alor page. Initially, this page will focus on Heroic mode and lower, however, as more bosses are being killed on Mythic, the guide will also include optimizations for Mythic bosses.

Battle of Dazar'alor has a decent bit of mechanics that require high burst DPS, which Arcane Mage excels at. However, there is also a lot of mobility required, which can make Arcane Mage hard to play optimally on some encounters. Overall, Arcane is looking to be a middle of the pack spec in Battle of Dazar'alor, but tuning changes can and often do come early on in a new raid, which might change this prediction.

Nether Tempest or Touch of the Magi can both be used. Nether Tempest will give you a bit more overall DPS, without giving up much boss DPS. However, if your group really needs priority DPS, you can swap to Touch of the Magi.

This fight is fairly straightforward for an Arcane Mage, and does not have a whole lot of mechanics to optimize. The main thing to keep in mind is to not hit the boss when the boss has Seal of Reckoning up, and to not kill any adds while the boss has Seal of Retribution up.

Aside from that, you should make sure you do not position yourself between the boss and the adds, so you do not have to move to dodge the Wave of Light. This is especially important when you use Rune of Power.

If the boss has many Zealotry stacks and casts Judgment: Reckoning, you should use Greater Invisibility or Ice Block, as it will do a lot of damage.

Lastly, when you are about to use all your cooldowns, make sure you are in range of both the boss and adds, so when the boss switches between Judgments, you will be in range to swap to the opposite target without losing any DPS time.

Rune of Power should yield higher DPS on this fight, but there are a fair amount of mechanics that can force you to move, so if you end up having to move out of your Rune too often, you should consider Incanter's Flow.

This fight works exactly the same for both Alliance and Horde players, but every ability has a different name for each faction. Because of this, whenever any ability name is used in this guide, we will name both the Horde and Alliance versions.

If the boss ever reaches 100% Rage / Death Energy, use Ice Block or Greater Invisibility, as this will do extreme amounts of damage. If the strategy is done properly, this should never happen, but if it does happen, be ready to use one of these defensives.

To avoid being feared when Ferocious Roar is cast, you have to stay near someone (within 5 yards). Your best bet is to stay with someone who has a similar playstyle as you. In general, being with another Mage works great, because you both have the same mobility and defensive utility. You should both use Shimmer to get away from the Reverberating Echo / Deathly Echo to lose as little time as possible from movement.

This fight can be quite frantic, which can make Rune of Power hard to use without a lot of practice on the fight. Choose between Rune of Power and Incanter's Flow depending on your level of comfort on the fight.

Arcane Mages are very good at popping the Magma Traps that spawn around the room. You can take one with the following combo: Greater Invisibility -> Walk into one -> Shimmer instantly as it explodes. If you do it correctly, you will not fly much into the air at all, because of Shimmer. Even if you have already taken one, and gotten the debuff which makes you take 100% more damage from Magma Traps, you can still take an additional one. This combo however is trickier and requires very quick reactions, or a macro. You should aim yourself towards one of the Magma Traps, and then Shimmer into it. While the animation of Shimmer is happening, you need to Ice Block. This will get rid of the Magma Trap without taking any damage nor getting knocked into the air. The macro below makes it much easier, as you can simply aim towards the trap, and press the macro.

• #showtooltip
• /cast Shimmer
• /cast Ice Block

Make sure you keep stacks of Shimmer ready for when the bosses reach 60 Energy, so you can more quickly get through the maze to start damaging the Ice Wall.

Make sure you save plenty of Mana and possibly a Rune of Power charge for when the Mage casts its fire shield, so you can burn the shield quickly and interrupt the Pyroblast the boss casts.

This fight has a large amount of mechanics that require you to move a lot of the time. Because of this, Rune of Power is only worth considering if you are on the side without the Flames of Punishment (left side). Otherwise, you should take Incanter's Flow.

This phase is all about minimizing movement as much as possible. Both sides have quite a lot of movement, but the right side has more movement. If possible, you should try to get yourself assigned to the left side.

On the left side, you can Shimmer → Displacement combo to place Volatile Charge on top of other lightning orbs.

On the right side, Flames of Punishment is the most punishing mechanic in terms of DPS loss. It is very risky to try to do Shimmer / Displacement moves to try and dodge the cones, so your best bet is to just run with the group and use Arcane Explosion during this movement, unless you are very confident and have a high risk tolerance, in which case you can practice using Shimmer and Displacement to dodge the cones.

If you get Liquid Gold, you should Shimmer to the edge of the room right before it times out, and then use Displacement to get back in.

If you get Coin Shower, you can Ice Block the debuff to completely absorb this mechanic and avoid a lot of raid damage.

This fight, as with most fights in Battle of Dazar'alor, has quite a lot of mechanics that will require you to move to or from certain areas, which can make Rune of Power hard to use optimally. Depending on your comfort level of the fight, you can choose between Rune of Power and Incanter's Flow.

On the PTR, it was possible to spellsteal the Gift of Wind buff. It is unsure if this is intended or not, but if it still works on live servers, it is a huge DPS increase to spellsteal this buff, so make sure you communicate with your group that you want to spellsteal it, so no one else dispels it.

Make sure if anyone gets the Crawling Hex debuff to not dispel them instantly, but to wait until they are out of the group.

Keep an eye on your boss mod timers for Gonk's Wrath, to make sure you save Mana and have 4 Arcane Charges when they spawn, so you can burn them down very quickly.

Use Shimmer to get away from the group when you get targeted by Kimbul's Wrath or Akunda's Wrath.

This fight, as with most fights in Battle of Dazar'alor, has quite a lot of mechanics that will require you to move to or from certain areas, which can make Rune of Power hard to use optimally. Depending on your comfort level of the fight, you can choose between Rune of Power and Incanter's Flow.

Keep an eye on your boss timer for Zombie Dust Totem and make sure you have 4 Arcane Charges and some Mana when it spawns so you can quickly kill it.

If you are assigned to go into the death realm when King Rastakhan reaches 60% Health, you need to make sure you have all your cooldowns and most of your Mana available when he reaches 60%, so when you get teleported into the death realm, you can maximize your DPS on Bwonsamdi.

This fight, as with most fights in Battle of Dazar'alor, has quite a lot of mechanics that will require you to move to or from certain areas, which can make Rune of Power hard to use optimally. Depending on your comfort level of the fight, you can choose between Rune of Power and Incanter's Flow.

Use Shimmer to avoid Crash Down if you are in the targeting circle instead of moving out to avoid losing DPS. This ability always happens after Blast Off, so make sure you do not use Rune of Power during Blast Off, as it is quite likely you will have to Shimmer out of your Rune of Power afterwards.

Make clever use of Shimmer and Displacement to get behind line of sight when affected with Gigavolt Charge. You can use Displacement to get back to your last Shimmer location if you get pulled to other players due to Wormhole Generator, to quickly make it back to a line of sight position.

This fight, as with most fights in Battle of Dazar'alor, has quite a lot of mechanics that will require you to move to or from certain areas, which can make Rune of Power hard to use optimally. Depending on your comfort level of the fight, you can choose between Rune of Power and Incanter's Flow.

Voltaic Flash has a lot of different combos, but most of them can be fully dodged just with usage of Shimmer and Displacement, since they all alternate positions in some form or another. The general idea is to Shimmer out of the path of the first set of orbs, and then after that one is done, use Displacement to get back to your previous spot, which is usually a safe spot after the first set of orbs.

When targeted with Crackling Lightning, quickly Shimmer away from other people and Displacement back after you got hit by it.

Make sure you keep an eye on your boss-mod timers for Electric Shroud so you have 4 Arcane Charges and high Mana when it is cast, so you can quickly burst the shield down.

When targeted by Tempting Song, you have a brief moment to get as far away as possible before it starts channeling. Make sure you use Shimmer to get as far away as possible.

Make sure you keep an eye on your boss-mod timers for Tidal Shroud so you have 4 Arcane Charges and high Mana when it is cast, so you can quickly burst the shield down.

You can solo soak Ire of the Deep to reduce raid damage, by using Greater Invisibility or Ice Block.

This fight, as with most fights in Battle of Dazar'alor, has quite a lot of mechanics that will require you to move to or from certain areas, which can make Rune of Power hard to use optimally. Depending on your comfort level of the fight, you can choose between Rune of Power and Incanter's Flow.

Use Shimmer during Avalanche to get rid of as many Searing Pitch patches as possible.

Mages can get to Jaina quite quickly compared to other classes to interrupt her, but it is very risky, since you can easily Shimmer into mechanics and get too high Chilling Touch stacks and get Frozen Solid. You can, however, use Ice Block to remove the Chilling Touch stacks, so when you get Frozen Solid, you should use Ice Block.

Use Shimmer to get away from the group when targeted by Broadside or Siegebreaker Blast. You can also use Shimmer to get to the Barrels (if/when assigned to do so) when you get targeted with Broadside.

Make sure you have some or most of your DPS cooldowns available for the second intermission, since it is a tight DPS check.

Since there are no ways to remove Chilling Touch stacks in this phase, it is a big advantage if you managed to keep Ice Block for this phase, so you can break Frozen Solid once.

A stack of Rune of Power should be saved for Prismatic Image so you can quickly burst it down.