Arcane Mage DPS Easy Mode — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0.1)

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!

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

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

The build below is perfect for fights where you want to primarily focus on single-target damage but have 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.

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, 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.
• Not wasting Arcane Salvo stacks. Arcane Salvo provides a massive damage increase to Arcane Barrage, so we want to make sure we do not overcap Arcane Salvo stacks while also making sure we have 4 Arcane Charges ready when we cap Arcane Salvo so we can immediately use Arcane Barrage.
• Minimizing casts while on low Arcane Charges. Since our primary abilities both scale their damage with Arcane Charges, it is important we try to avoid casting these ( Arcane Blast and Arcane Barrage) while on low charges as much as possible. The main methods we avoid this is by using Arcane Orb and High Voltage. Since Arcane is very mana hungry, this is not always avoidable, but it is still important to keep in mind.

This leads us to the following basic rotation:

• Cast Arcane Surge into Touch of the Magi when both are ready. Also activate any on-use trinkets or racials that provide damage bonuses or stat increases.
• If only Touch of the Magi is ready, but not Arcane Surge, cast Touch of the Magi. You can do this once in-between each Arcane Surge usage.
• Cast Arcane Barrage when you have 4 Arcane Charges and maximum Arcane Salvo stacks.
• Cast Arcane Orb if you have Clearcasting.
• Cast Arcane Orb when you have fewer than 2 Arcane Charges.
• Cast Arcane Blast as your filler. Even on multiple targets!
• Cast Arcane Barrage when unable to cast Arcane Blast due to being out of mana.

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.

Patch 11.1.7 introduced two new combat related functionalities, the Assisted Highlight, and the Single-Button Assistant. For a full overview on how to enable these features and all of their details, check out our Combat Assistant page.

The Assisted Highlight rotation is a relatively decent rotation, so following it can be a good way to learn the rotation, however, you are giving up around 20-25% damage to do so depending on your talents and hero talents.

The Single-Button assistant is more punishing, giving up an additional 5% damage compared to the Assisted Highlight, for a total of around 25-30%. However, it allows you to focus entirely on the dungeon / boss mechanics, which is very valuable.

Note that neither the Single-Button rotation nor the Assisted Highlight rotation will cast/highlight Arcane Surge, racial cooldowns, or items, like trinkets, so you will have to use these manually.

• Make sure to use Arcane Surge as close to on-cooldown as possible, while making sure Touch of the Magi is ready or nearly ready when you use it.
• Use your trinkets, potions, racial cooldowns (like Berserking) or other on-use cooldowns during Arcane Surge.
• The Single-Button rotation will cast Arcane Explosion when you are fighting 3 or more targets, so make sure you are positioning yourself correctly to hit all targets with it.
• It will also cast Arcane Orb as part of its rotation, so make sure that you are facing in a way that will hit all targets, and not accidentally pull other targets with it.