Arcane Mage DPS Easy Mode — The War Within (11.1.0)

Last updated on Feb 24, 2025 at 21:57 by Dutchmagoz 70 comments
General Information

On this page, we explain how to easily play Arcane Mage in World of Warcraft — The War Within (11.1.0), using the simplest rotation, talent tree, stat priority, gear setup, etc., without sacrificing performance.

This section is intended for players who are new to the game or class, have no intentions of raiding Mythic difficulty, or simply want a more straightforward way to play their specialization without being overwhelmed by the numerous priorities and active abilities that need to be taken into consideration for optimal play.

1.

The Basics for Arcane Mage

Arcane is a great Swiss Army Knife that has a complete toolkit to approach any situation. It provides great burst as well as impressive AoE. It is also hypermobile and comes equipped with a variety of defensive spells and cooldowns. In this section, we will be focusing on a setup that minimizes the number of buttons and reactivity necessary without unduly compromising overall damage output.

If you are completely new to Arcane and need more information on the abilities available to you, you can check out our Spell Summary page.

2.

What Hero Talents to use as Arcane Mage?

You should play Spellslinger as Arcane Mage in all situations.

3.

Beginner's Guide to Arcane Mage in The War Within

Single Target Talents AoE/Mythic+ Talents Cleave Talents Basic Rotation
4.

Beginner Single-Target Talents for Arcane Mage

This build is a great starting point for pure single-target situations.

Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!

4.

Beginner AoE Talents for Arcane Mage

The tree below is a tree focused on doing cleave and AoE damage.

You can easily import the talent tree below into the game by using the "copy export string" button below.

4.

Beginner Cleave Talents for Arcane Mage

The build below is perfect for fights where you want to primarily focus on single-target damage but has occasional secondary targets you also want to hit. For true AoE situations, this build is worse than the pure AoE build, but for raid bosses with occasional adds, this is the perfect build.

You can easily import the talent tree below into the game by using the "copy export string" button below.

4.

Beginner Arcane Mage DPS Rotation

Arcane is largely focused around a couple of key concepts:

  • Use cooldowns quickly. This is important for almost all specs in the game, but Arcane really suffers when you sit on your cooldowns for a long time. Not only are you losing damage from not gaining the damage benefits from your cooldowns like Arcane Surge Icon Arcane Surge, but your mana generation is directly tied to your cooldowns, further lowering your damage and making it much harder to remain at 4 Arcane Charges.
  • Staying at 4 Arcane Charges as long as possible to cast hard hitting Arcane Blast Icon Arcane Blasts and Arcane Barrage Icon Arcane Barrages, while ensuring you do not run out of mana until Evocation Icon Evocation is back up. This moves us onto the next point:
  • Using Arcane Barrage Icon Arcane Barrage as much as possible when it does more damage or you can immediately gain Arcane Charges back, to avoid going out of mana while still keeping up high damage abilities, while avoiding low damage Arcane Barrages.

This leads us to the following basic rotation:

  • Cast Evocation Icon Evocation into Arcane Surge Icon Arcane Surge into Touch of the Magi Icon Touch of the Magi when all 3 are ready.
  • If only Touch of the Magi Icon Touch of the Magi is ready, but not the other 2, cast Touch of the Magi. You can do this once in-between each Evocation + Arcane Surge usage.
  • Cast Arcane Missiles Icon Arcane Missiles when you have Clearcasting Icon Clearcasting and you do not have Nether Precision Icon Nether Precision.
  • Cast Arcane Barrage Icon Arcane Barrage in any of the following scenarios:
    • You have Intuition Icon Intuition.
    • You have 18 stacks of Arcane Harmony Icon Arcane Harmony.
    • You have Arcane Orb Icon Arcane Orb ready.
    • You are out of mana.
  • Cast Arcane Blast Icon Arcane Blast as your filler. On multiple targets, cast Arcane Explosion Icon Arcane Explosion as your filler until 3 Arcane Charges, then Arcane Blast.

Keep in mind that this is a simplified rotation. If you want to learn how to get the most out of your character, check out our full rotation page below.

5.

Best Talents And Rotation for Arcane Mage in The War Within

This is the Easy Mode page, which presents things in a simplified manner with simplified builds. For our detailed, fully-fledged Talent and Rotation guides, click below!

6.

Gearing an Arcane Mage

6.1.

Stat Choice for Arcane Mage

You will want to prioritize secondary stats as follows:

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

We recommend you prioritize item levels over specific stats, as they are all very close in value.

While the stat priority for classes is normally the same for both the Easy Mode page and our full guide, subtle differences can still occur. If you want to see the full explanation of the stat priority, as well as the absolute top choices for the priority, head to our full stats page below.

If you are interested in finding out about the specific best-in-slot items from the current tier or want more information on how to gear, we suggest reading the full gearing page below.

7.

Changelog

  • 24 Feb. 2025: Updated for 11.1: Updated optimal rotation, stats, talents and hero talents for 11.1 changes and tier bonus.
  • 15 Dec. 2024: Slightly updated rotation.
  • 21 Oct. 2024: Updated talents and rotation for the 11.0.5 rework.
  • 09 Sep. 2024: Updated Rotation to be slightly better but similar difficulty level, and update stat priority for Season 1.
  • 21 Aug. 2024: Updated for The War Within.
  • 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
  • 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
  • 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Season 4.
  • 19 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.6.
  • 15 Jan. 2024: Updated rotation to be easier and slightly more DPS.
  • 06 Nov. 2023: Updated talents and rotation for 10.2 changes.
  • 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7
  • 10 Jul. 2023: Updated Rotation and Talents for the Arcane rework for 10.1.5
  • 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: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
  • 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
  • 24 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
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