Arcane Mage Frequently Asked Questions — The War Within (11.1.0)

There are no haste caps for Arcane Mages.

However, depending on your chosen talents and your other stats, Haste will lose some value at higher levels. To make sure you run with optimal stats, it is advised to use Raidbots Stat Weights to actively keep your stats up to date (see our Raidbots guide).

In 11.1, Arcane is performing relatively poorly compared to some previous tiers. It is lacking slightly behind the other Mage specs when it comes to single-target damage, but has incredible cleave damage and funnel damage. Unfortunately, compared to many other classes, Arcane is quite a bit behind. However, every group tends to still want at least one or more Mages, so you will not run into any issues finding groups.

In Raiding content, Arcane struggles to compete with the top performing specs (especially melee classes). Amongst the ranged classes, Arcane is performing not terribly well either, but definitely still a viable option on all raid bosses.

In Mythic+, Arcane has incredible funnel damage, making it great at burning down priority enemies while still doing decent AoE damage. However, it does perform a fair bit worse than many other classes, including both Fire and Frost. Having said that, it brings great group utility and has great survival, so it can still do any key in the game without issues, apart from the very highest pushing keys.

All races are very close in DPS, and it generally does not matter what race you play. Usually, Mechagnome, Human, or Troll is going to be the highest DPS, but it depends on your gear and the content you are doing, and generally, all races are within half a percentage of each other. For a full overview of the DPS of every race, check the simulations page.

You can enter the Burn Phase whenever you have Arcane Surge, Touch of the Magi and Evocation ready.