Arcane Mage DPS Gear and Best in Slot — The War Within (11.1.0)
On this page, you will find the best gear and best in slot items for your Arcane Mage in World of Warcraft The War Within (11.1.0).
If you were looking for WotLK Classic content, please refer to our WotLK Classic Arcane Mage gear and best in slot.
Gearing an Arcane Mage
Welcome to our Gearing Page for Arcane Mage. This section will cover everything you need to know about equipping your character correctly.
If you have a new piece of gear for which you need gems and enchant advice, you can find everything on our dedicated page below.
Best in Slot Gear for Raiding
BiS Gear for Arcane Mage
The War Within Season 2 Overall BiS List for Arcane Mage
This list contains the Best in Slot Gear for Arcane Mage in The War Within Season 2 from all sources, including Raiding, Mythic+, Delves, The Great Vault, and Crafted.
Note that there is no such thing as a singular, all-encompassing "BiS". The best items vary per character and situation, and many items are essentially equivalent in terms of DPS, namely when we are just shuffling secondary stats around. I will list one "BiS" item per slot, but ultimately, BiS lists are not very practically useful and you should be simming your character to find out what gear to equip next. Nonetheless, there is a huge demand for this list, and thus, you can use the list below as a guideline as to what an endgame set of gear looks like.
Slot | Item | Source/Note |
---|---|---|
Weapon | ![]() |
Great Vault |
Helm | ![]() |
One-Armed Bandit/Matrix Catalyst/Great Vault |
Neck | ![]() |
Rik Reverb in Liberation of Undermine |
Shoulder | ![]() |
Rik Reverb/Matrix Catalyst/Great Vault |
Cloak | ![]() |
Great Vault |
Chest | ![]() |
Great Vault |
Bracers | ![]() ![]() |
Crafted — Tailoring |
Gloves | ![]() |
Cauldron of Carnage/Matrix Catalyst/Great Vault |
Belt | ![]() |
Great Vault |
Legs | ![]() |
Stix Bunkjunker/Matrix Catalyst/Great Vault |
Boots | ![]() ![]() |
Crafted — Tailoring |
Ring #1 | ![]() |
Chrome King Gallywix in Liberation of Undermine |
Ring #2 | ![]() |
One-Armed Bandit in Liberation of Undermine |
Trinket #1 | ![]() |
Mug'Zee in Liberation of Undermine |
Trinket #2 | ![]() |
Chrome King Gallywix in Liberation of Undermine |
Season 1 Overall BiS List for Arcane Mage
This list contains the Best in Slot Gear for Arcane Mage in The War Within Season 2 from the Liberation of Undermine Raid.
Note that this BiS List is for items from Liberation of Undermine. I am separating the BiS lists by gear sources. This is what you send to your Raid Leader/Loot Council when they ask you what your BiS gear is from the Raid.
Note that there is no such thing as a singular, all-encompassing "BiS". The best items vary per character and situation, and many items are essentially equivalent in terms of DPS, namely when we are just shuffling secondary stats around. I will list one "BiS" item per slot, but ultimately, BiS lists are not very practically useful and you should be simming your character to find out what gear to equip next. Nonetheless, there is a huge demand for this list, and thus, you can use the list below as a guideline as to what an endgame set of gear looks like.
Slot | Item | Source/Note |
---|---|---|
Weapon | ![]() |
Stix Bunkjunker in Liberation of Undermine |
Helm | ![]() |
One-Armed Bandit/Matrix Catalyst/Great Vault |
Neck | ![]() |
Rik Reverb in Liberation of Undermine |
Shoulder | ![]() |
Rik Reverb/Matrix Catalyst/Great Vault |
Cloak | ![]() |
Vexie Fullthrottle in Liberation of Undermine |
Chest | ![]() |
One-Armed Bandit in Liberation of Undermine |
Bracers | ![]() |
Chrome King Gallywix in Liberation of Undermine |
Gloves | ![]() |
Cauldron of Carnage/Matrix Catalyst/Great Vault |
Belt | ![]() |
Sprocketmonger Lockenstock in Liberation of Undermine |
Legs | ![]() |
Stix Bunkjunker/Matrix Catalyst/Great Vault |
Boots | ![]() |
Mug'Zee in Liberation of Undermine |
Ring #1 | ![]() |
Chrome King Gallywix in Liberation of Undermine |
Ring #2 | ![]() |
One-Armed Bandit in Liberation of Undermine |
Trinket #1 | ![]() |
Mug'Zee in Liberation of Undermine |
Trinket #2 | ![]() |
Chrome King Gallywix in Liberation of Undermine |
Season 1 Overall BiS List for Arcane Mage
This list contains the Best in Slot Gear for Arcane Mage from The War Within Season 2 Mythic+.
Note that this BiS List is for items from Mythic+. I am separating the BiS lists by gear sources. This is the list you can chase when you want to improve your gear by farming Mythic+ dungeons.
Note that there is no such thing as a singular, all-encompassing "BiS". The best items vary per character and situation, and many items are essentially equivalent in terms of DPS, namely when we are just shuffling secondary stats around. I will list one "BiS" item per slot, but ultimately, BiS lists are not very practically useful and you should be simming your character to find out what gear to equip next. Nonetheless, there is a huge demand for this list, and thus, you can use the list below as a guideline as to what an endgame set of gear looks like.
Note that tier pieces are still included. Although technically not farmable in Mythic+, they do appear in the Mythic+ Great Vault (678) options and can be upgraded from Mythic+ pieces with Matrix Catalyst. Due to how important they are to building your character, and still obtainable if you only do Mythic+, I included them here.
Slot | Item | Source/Note |
---|---|---|
Weapon | ![]() |
Great Vault (678) or Operation: Mechagon (665) |
Helm | ![]() |
One-Armed Bandit/Matrix Catalyst/Great Vault |
Neck | ![]() |
Great Vault (678) or Cinderbrew Meadery (665) |
Shoulder | ![]() |
Rik Reverb/Matrix Catalyst/Great Vault |
Cloak | ![]() |
Great Vault (678) or Operation: Mechagon (665) |
Chest | ![]() |
Great Vault (678) or The MOTHERLODE!! (665) |
Bracers | ![]() |
Great Vault (678) or The MOTHERLODE!! (665) |
Gloves | ![]() |
Cauldron of Carnage/Matrix Catalyst/Great Vault |
Belt | ![]() |
Great Vault or Operation: Mechagon (665) |
Legs | ![]() |
Stix Bunkjunker/Matrix Catalyst/Great Vault |
Boots | ![]() |
Matrix Catalyst on any boots |
Ring #1 | ![]() |
Great Vault (678) or Darkflame Cleft (665) |
Ring #2 | ![]() |
Great Vault (678) or Priory of the Sacred Flame (665) |
Trinket #1 | ![]() |
Great Vault (678) or Priory of the Sacred Flame (665) |
Trinket #2 | ![]() |
Great Vault (678) or Operation: Floodgate (665) |
Best Trinkets for Arcane Mage in The War Within Season 2
It is worth noting, that our best in slot weapon ( Neural Synapse Enhancer)
shares a 20 second cooldown with any on-use trinkets. Due to this, using
the Neural Synapse Enhancer greatly devalues on-use trinkets, and in turn,
on-use trinkets devalue the weapon. This combined with the limited good on-use
trinkets in Season 2, makes us use the weapon and then combine it with 2 passive trinkets.
There are various trinkets that are good for Arcane in Season 2. Below we list the most important options:
Mug's Moxie Jug — One of our two top trinkets
Eye of Kezan — One of our two top trinkets
Synergistic Brewterializer — Equal to Eye of Kezan on single-target, but harder to use and also falls behind in AoE situations. Good pick if you cannot obtain Eye of Kezan.
Additionally, there are a bunch of weaker trinkets which can also be used if you do not have access to the top trinkets:
Reverb Radio: Worse than the best options, can be used as a fallback if you do manage to obtain it without obtaining the better trinkets.
Carved Blazikon Wax: Quite a bit worse than the best options, however it can be farmed in Darkflame Cleft allowing you to deterministically obtain it with enough effort if you cannot obtain the raid trinkets.
Best Cyrce's Circlet Gems for Arcane Mage
Cyrce's Circlet is a ring introduced in Patch 11.0.7. This
ring is obtained by doing content is the zone of patch 11.0.7, Siren Isle.
It has 3 sockets that can be filled by a special type of gem, also obtained from
Sirens Isle content. Each socket has its own type, and there are 4 gems for each
type, for a total of 12 gems. However, most slots only provide limited DPS
related options, providing limited flexibility.
If you have a maxed out ring, it stays relatively strong until you can get heroic item level rings from Liberation of Undermine, or similar level from Mythic+. However, it highly depends on the rings available to you, so I suggest simming your own items. Generally, using Season 2 rings will be better. If you do not have the ring maxed out, it is not worth spending time to max out the ring, as the ring will be replaced with Season 2 rings.
These are generally considered to be the best gems, but it is highly recommended to sim yourself to figure out the best choices and combinations for your specific gear and the specific gems and other rings you already own:
- For raid, you will want to play
Thunderlord's Crackling Citrine,
Fathomdweller's Runed Citrine and
Legendary Skipper's Citrine
- For Mythic+/AoE, you will want to play
Stormbringer's Runed Citrine,
Fathomdweller's Runed Citrine and
Squall Sailor's Citrine
Best Crafted Items for Arcane Mage
Disclaimer: What to craft is highly dependent on your own personal goals, what content you are doing, and what items you have looted so far. We strongly suggest you run your own simulations on raidbots by using droptimizer to figure out your personal best crafting options.
Generally, the best crafted items will be 2 items with the Elemental Focusing Lens
Embellishment. As the item level of crafted items is lower than what you can obtain
from high end PvE content, you will want to craft this on item slots with
fewer stats, like boots, bracers, or belt. In a best in slot setup, you would
use boots and bracers, but this is highly specific to the best in slot setup.
As long as you pick two out of the three listed slots, it will be good.
Best Crafting Order for Arcane Mage
Above we listed the best items, however, the order in which you craft items is highly dependant on how quickly you expect to get certain items. Below we list some suggested options to approach your crafting:
Vagabond's Bounding Baton (double-check you pick the Intellect staff!) with
Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension and Haste + Versatility is a very solid starter option. Although not technically best-in-slot, it requires low amount of crests and provides a large amount of immediate power. If you are confident you will loot a 675+ weapon early on, you should skip this step.
- Based on your available pieces, craft either boots, bracers or belt
with
Elemental Focusing Lens and Haste + Versatility. Pick whichever slot is lowest item level currently. Boots/bracers are best-in-slot, but focusing on replacing lower item level is more important than best-in-slot, as all 3 are extremely close in damage. (within 0.2% DPS)
- After looting a 675+ weapon, craft another item from the previous step:
boots, bracers or belt with
Elemental Focusing Lens and Haste + Versatility.
- Next, chase Item Level where needed. None of the crafted options aside from your 2 Embellished items will be best-in-slot, so just go for whichever slot gives you the biggest item level bump.
- At some point, if you are close to full best-in-slot, switch your Embellished items over to boots + bracers, if they are not already. Only do this if you have 678 item level belt.
- At this point, you are mostly done crafting. You can spend future Sparks on off-spec items, alternatively statted crafts for different situations, and so on.
The War Within Season 2 Tier Set for Arcane Mage
The Tier Set is comprised of 5 items of the Aspectral Emissarys set. Wearing 2 and 4 pieces from the set gives you DPS bonuses:
-
Mage Arcane 11.1 Class Set 2pc — Your spells and abilities have a small chance to hit a Jackpot! granting you Clearcasting and 5% increased spell damage for 12 sec. Casting
Touch of the Magi always hits a Jackpot!
-
Mage Arcane Season 1 4pc — When you hit a Jackpot!, you also gain
Aether Attunement at 100% effectiveness.
The Tier Set Bonus is absolutely mandatory for competitive play, and you should prioritize obtaining it. You can use the Matrix Catalyst to convert regular items (from Mythic+, for example) into Tier Items.
You only need 4 pieces out of 5 to get both set bonuses. We recommend you get all items except for the Chest, but obtaining 4 items as fast as possible is much more important than getting them on the right slots. Check out the BiS List for more information.
The 2-set provides you a simple damage buff sometimes, but also provides
additional Clearcasting procs. You can definitely feel the amount
of extra procs. Due to the extra procs, it is also effectively providing
you more mana regeneration. Additionally, the fact it is guaranteed to proc
when you cast
Touch of the Magi guarantees that all of your burn phases,
including your mini burns, are even stronger, and you do not need to
try to save any procs for your burn phases.
The 4-set makes the set even stronger. Aether Attunement greatly
increases your
Arcane Missiles damage. However, this set bonus shines
even better in AoE scenarios, where Aether Attunement is a massive damage buff.
Additionally, since you generally run
High Voltage in AoE scenarios,
this also provides a large amount of Arcane Charge generation.
To see how the set bonuses fully interact with the rotation, see the rotation page.
Evaluating Upgrades
The easiest way, and also the method we suggest, to compare multiple items is to use Raidbots' Top Gear. Here, you can input an export from the Simcraft AddOn, select the items to compare, and it will find out which of the items are best. See below for a guide on how to sim yourself.
Changelog
- 25 Feb. 2025: Updated best trinkets to also recommend Synergistic Brewterializer as a potential Eye of Kezan alternative.
- 24 Feb. 2025: Updated best in slot for season 2 / 11.1 gear, updated crafting recommendations due to new bis items, updated trinkets for new trinkets.
- 17 Dec. 2024: Updated Cyrce's Circlet suggestions after buffs, and updated BiS to include it now that it's better.
- 15 Dec. 2024: Added Cyrce's Circlet section.
- 21 Oct. 2024: Updated bis + trinket tier lists to list Transmitter as second best trinket.
- 24 Sep. 2024: Fixed incorrect profession linked for off-hand craft.
- 10 Sep. 2024: Added note that you can craft embellishments on non spark items.
- 09 Sep. 2024: Added 3 bis lists from different sources: Raiding, Mythic+, Overall. Added trinket tier list. Removed disclaimer from crafting text.
- 03 Sep. 2024: Updated crafting recommendations and bis lists.
- 27 Aug. 2024: Updated crafting suggestions on updated Embellishments and updated bis lists.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Updated for The War Within.
- 30 Jul. 2024: Fixed not having 4 piece in the overall bis list.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Updated for Season 4: updated bis lists, added bullion items, updated suggested crafting.
- 19 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
- 13 Nov. 2023: Updated BiS to account for different M+ loot and updated raid only bis.
- 07 Nov. 2023: Updated BiS and embellishments due to sporecloak nerf.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated BiS, embellishments and other relevant sections for 10.2.
- 26 Sep. 2023: Changed layout.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Added 3 different best-in-slot builds.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated BiS for new optimal gear due to rework, and updated Onyx Annulet section for nerfed version.
- 25 May 2023: Added Timwalking section.
- 10 May 2023: Updated trinket suggestions based on further improvements.
- 08 May 2023: Updated trinket suggestions based on improved sims and further theorycrafting.
- 01 May 2023: Updated best-in-slot items, crafting suggestions and other gearing advice for 10.1.
- 25 Mar. 2023: Updated Onyx ring suggestions based on hotfixes.
- 22 Mar. 2023: Updated bis to include Onyx Annulet due to new gem combinations being found.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Added Onyx Annulet information and reviewed for patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2022: Added Voidmenders Shadowgem to list of trinkets.
- 20 Jan. 2022: Fixed typo.
- 17 Dec. 2022: Updated crafted gear due to bronzed grip changes.
- 13 Dec. 2022: Further updated crafted gear info with latest theorycrafting knowledge.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Added more info for crafted gear.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Updated gear advice based on season 1 available gear and crafted gear.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 24 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Mage Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Dutchmagoz. Dutchmagoz is a Mythic raider in one of the top raiding guilds, Turtles and the owner of the Mage Discord server, Altered Time, where he is involved in all things Mage, and you can reach out to him directly for feedback or questions about the guide.
- Official March Trading Post Offers for March 2025
- Talk to the Opposite Faction for Just 30 Gold – Here’s How
- The Easiest Week for Keystone Master? Final Mythic Runs Per Week Chart
- Patch 11.1 Nerub-ar Palace Raid DPS Log Rankings: Day 1
- The War Within Season 2 Dungeon Tuning: February 27 – Even More Nerfs
- Marvelous Meeksi Pack Now Available
- Patch 11.2 Internal Testing Begins—What to Expect in The War Within’s Final Major Patch?
- Struggling to Drift with the G99 Breakneck? There’s an Easy Fix!