Arcane Mage DPS Castle Nathria Raid Guide — Dragonflight 10.2.5

In this section, you will find information and guidance for each boss individually in Castle Nathria as a Arcane Mage. These are not complete encounter guides, but rather provide specific tips for any Arcane Mage on each boss.

During the Dragonflight Pre-Patch, Castle Nathria, Sanctum of Domination, and Sepulcher of the First Ones will be simultaneously featured as Fated Raids. During this time encounters within each specific raid will include an additional mechanic and items will drop at increased item levels. If you would like to learn more general information about the Fated Raids system as a whole, please see our overview below. Otherwise, continue to use this page for specialization-specific tips.

Disclaimer: The tips on this page are based on Shadowlands Season 4, not Dragonflight changes.

Below we list the most common talent setup for all bosses. This talent setup assumes you play as a Kyrian with the Arcane Harmony Legendary.

You can easily import the talent tree below into the game with the following string:

• B4DAHVkVsxxZrVqBmAzlSR2f7LAkWiQiUARLJiISTIBQChkAAAAAAAAAAAAEJJJhESSC

We advise you to use the following Legendary against Shriekwing: Arcane Harmony.

Before you have to hide for Earsplitting Shriek, you should activate Alter Time and then use Shimmer to get behind a pillar. After Earsplitting Shriek finishes, you can quickly get back in line of sight of the boss by re-activating Alter Time. You can do the same thing when you have to move to the edge of the room for Echolocation.

We have no Mythic specific tips for Shriekwing.

For more information, please refer to our Shriekwing guide.

We advise you to use the following Legendary against Huntsman Altimor: Arcane Harmony.

If your group does not use Bloodlust (or similar effect) at the start of the fight, you can swap to Arcane Bombardment instead.

When targeted by Vicious Lunge you can use Ice Block or Greater Invisibility to solo soak it instead of soaking it as a group.

When Shade of Barghast spawns, use Polymorph if assigned to crowd-control it. If possible, you should also try to have Rune of Power ready for when your group decides to kill the Shades so you can quickly blow them up while they take a lot of bonus damage, but do not delay your cooldowns too long for this. A good way to kill them quickly is by making sure you have 4 Arcane Charges ready as you are about to kill them, and then using Arcane Barrage -> Arcane Orb -> Arcane Barrage.

If your group decided to drop a large amount of Crushing Stone stacks from Hecutis at once, you should use a defensive like Greater Invisibility to reduce your damage taken.

When targeted with Petrifying Howl, you should activate Alter Time and then Shimmer away from the raid group to drop the pools away from the raid, and re-active Alter Time to get back into the group.

You can soak the Sinseeker with Ice Block and it will still count as a target for the damage split. Additionally, if you are the target of Sinseeker, you can solo soak it with Ice Block.

For more information, please refer to our Huntsman Altimor guide.

We advise you to use the following Legendary against Hungering Destroyer: Arcane Harmony.

When you have the Gluttonous Miasma ability, you cannot be healed, but Prismatic Barrier still works on absorbing damage, so try to use Prismatic Barrier on cooldown. Another great way to deal with this ability is to use Alter Time while you are high health, and re-activating Alter Time after being ticked down to the debuff, as Alter Time bringing you back to full health does not count as healing, so it goes through the debuff. Finally, damage reductions and immunities like Greater Invisibility and Ice Block can reduce the damage you take significantly, further reducing the need to leech life from allies.

When debuffed with Volatile Ejection, be careful with using Shimmer, as it will make it difficult for people to see exactly where you went to, making it hard to avoid the damage coming to you after it expires.

When the boss casts Consume you should use Shimmer to get away quickly if you started moving late.

We have no Mythic specific tips for Hungering Destroyer.

For more information, please refer to our Hungering Destroyer guide.

We advise you to use the following Legendary against Artificer Xy'Mox: Arcane Harmony.

Generally speaking Mages are great to deal with the many heavy movement mechanics of this fight, like placing the far away Dimensional Tears and picking up Seeds of Extinction and moving them in position. Make sure to plan your Shimmer usage well to deal with these mechanics if you are assigned to them.

We have no Mythic specific tips for Artificer Xy'Mox.

For more information, please refer to our Artificer Xy'Mox guide.

We advise you to use the following Legendary against Sun King's Salvation: Arcane Bombardment.

You can swap to Resonance here for more overall damage at the cost of priority target damage if your group needs more overall damage but has no issues dealing with the priority targets.

Your main job on this fight will be to single-target down high priority targets, and let multi-dot classes deal with the lower priority enemies. Namely during Phase 2, the Shade of Kael'thas is a high priority target for Arcane Mages, whereas the Reborn Phoenix adds should largely be ignored by Arcane Mages and killed by other more efficient multi-dot classes.

During Phase 1, you will want to largely focus on killing Vile Occultists and Bleakwing Assassins, as they are generally the targets most likely to cause your raid issues and Arcane can very quickly nuke down these relatively low health targets. Killing Pestering Fiends is generally not a good use of an Arcane Mages' time, as Arcane gains no priority damage out of hitting them, whereas other classes can multi-dot or cleave them to gain more damage on priority targets.

Nuking down the Shade of Kael'thas should be your priority here, as the Reborn Phoenix adds do not give you any priority target damage. Generally you will want to hold onto your cooldowns for the Shade as well, if you do not have to hold onto them too long.

If you have the Ember Blast debuff, you can solo soak this with Greater Invisibility or Ice Block if necessary.

During Phase 2, you will want to line up your Rune of Power with one of the Cloak of Flames and Arcane Power with the other Cloak of Flames to assist in breaking them quickly.

For more information, please refer to our Sun King's Salvation guide.

We advise you to use the following Legendary against Lady Inerva Darkvein: Arcane Harmony.

You can swap to Resonance here if your group is struggling with killing the adds that spawn from Concentrated Anima, however as this is largely a single-target DPS race fight, Arcane Echo is generally preferred.

As a Mage, you can easily use Shimmer to get to the far away Bottled Animas to soak them.

The adds that spawn from Concentrated Anima can be dealt with very effectively with the Arcane Mage AoE combo described on our rotation page.

You can use Ice Block during the Concentrated Anima cast to have a chance to negate the Add from spawning altogether. The boss picks random targets for this ability, and if it picked you while you were in Ice Block, 1 less add spawns.

For more information, please refer to our Lady Inerva Darkvein guide.

We advise you to use the following Legendary against The Council of Blood: Arcane Harmony.

You should make sure you have Presence of Mind for when you are targeted with Dark Recital, so you can use it to cast while moving.

You should try to line up your cooldowns to be up right after Danse Macabre to try to combine them with multiple stacks of Fancy Footwork.

We have no Mythic specific tips for the Council of Blood.

For more information, please refer to our The Council of Blood guide.

We advise you to use the following Legendary against Sludgefist: Arcane Harmony.

Avoid using Shimmer when you are linked to a different player with Chain Link, as it will cause you to take extremely high damage.

Line up your damage cooldowns for Destructive Impact. This happens from 1 minute into the fight and then every minute, which generally will mean you will use your Arcane Power on the pull, and then use Arcane Power for the 2-minute and 4-minute bonus damage phases.

There is a common strategy of sacrificing the people affected by Chain Link. If you are paired with the person designated to be sacrificed, you can trigger it by using Shimmer and Ice Block at the same time. This can be done with the following macro:

• /cast Shimmer
• /cast Ice Block

For more information, please refer to our Sludgefist guide.

We advise you to use the following Legendary against Stone Legion Generals: Arcane Harmony.

Use Alter Time -> Shimmer when you are targeted for Wicked Blade and then after it has bounced off of you, re-activate Alter Time to get back to the group.

When knocked back by Prince Renethal's Shattering Blast, you can cancel the knockback by using Shimmer mid air.

On non Mythic difficulties, you can use Ice Block to get rid of stacks of Serrated Tear.

We have no Mythic specific tips for the Stone Legion Generals.

For more information, please refer to our Stone Legion Generals guide.

We advise you to use the following Legendary against Sire Denathrius: Arcane Harmony.

When targeted by Night Hunter's Insatiable Hunger, you can soak this alone with Ice Block or Greater Invisibility.

We strongly suggest using the AoE combo described on our rotation page when the boss casts Cleansing Pain and spawns Echo of Sins, as these targets need to die very quickly.

When targeted by Impale, you can use Alter Time first before using Shimmer to get out of the group and re-activating Alter Time to get back into the group.

When the boss casts Hand of Destruction, use Shimmer to quickly get as far away as possible.

The orbs left behind by Fatal Finesse can be soaked without damage immunities, but using Greater Invisibility does reduce the damage significantly so can be useful when soaking an orb.

The knockback from Shattering Pain can be cancelled by using Shimmer, which is especially useful later on in the fight when you have very little room to move.

We have no Mythic specific tips for Denathrius.

For more information, please refer to our Sire Denathrius guide.