Arcane Mage DPS Liberation of Undermine Raid Guide — The War Within (11.1.0)
On this page, you will find tips, tricks, and strategies tailored to your Arcane Mage for each boss of the following raid: Liberation of Undermine. All our content is updated for World of Warcraft — The War Within (11.1.0).
Introduction
Below, you can find class and spec-specific advice for every fight in Liberation of Undermine. If you are looking for a general overview of the Raid that is not spec-specific, check out our dedicated Liberation of Undermine Boss guides.
On this page, you will find tips and tricks specifically tailored toward Arcane Mages and its toolkit based on the recommended talent build. It does not include general tips for mechanics, which are included in the full raid guide instead, whereas this page assumes that you are already familiar with most of the major mechanics of each encounter.
All recommendations are progression-based tips and will not necessarily be the best for an overall DPS ranking.
Liberation of Undermine Boss Guides for Arcane Mage
Liberation of Undermine Raid Builds, Tips, and Tricks for Arcane Mage
Tips for Vexie Fullthrottle for Arcane Mage
Defensive Tips
- Activating
Alter Time right as
Exhaust Fumes goes out and then re-activating it near the end is a great way to avoid all of the damage and minimize healing required on you.
- Make sure to use
Prismatic Barrier if you get targeted for
Incendiary Fire.
- Otherwise simply rotate using your defensives during the bonus damage phase to minimize the healing you need.
Cooldown Usage
- Use your cooldowns right at the start of the fight, but after that
hold your cooldowns until each bonus damage phase.
You can use 1
Touch of the Magi in-between each bonus damage phase.
- Make sure to channel
Evocation a few second before each damage bonus phase begins to ensure you are not wasting time during the bonus damage phase on Evocation.
Mechanical Tips
- Use
Alter Time if you get
Spew Oil, after which you can use
Shimmer to drop the oil, and then re-activate Alter Time.
- Make sure to align yourself so that any
Arcane Orbs (either manual or from
Orb Barrage) will hit as many adds as possible.
Best Talents
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the build directly into your game!
Tips for Cauldron of Carnage for Arcane Mage
Defensive Tips
- While on the Flarendo side, you should rotate your cooldowns for each
Scrapbomb.
Ice Cold for one,
Greater Invisibility for the second and
Prismatic Barrier +
Mirror Image for the third.
Cooldown Usage
- Generally you can use your DPS cooldowns as they become available. However, keep an eye out of the boss energy bar. If it is close to full, you should hold your cooldowns a few seconds to align it with the intermission to get cleave damage out of your cooldowns. This will align pretty well naturally, only having to delay cooldowns a few seconds.
Mechanical Tips
- This is a relatively straightforward boss from a mechanical standpoint.
Make sure to use
Shimmer aggressively to avoid losing uptime when dealing with the mechanics.
Best Talents
If your group requires it, you can spec out of Ice Cold to be able
to solo soak
Scrapbomb.
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the build directly into your game!
Tips for Rik Reverb for Arcane Mage
Defensive Tips
- If targeted by
Sound Cannon, make sure to use a defensive like
Mirror Image +
Prismatic Barrier.
Cooldown Usage
- Use your main DPS cooldowns as they become available, unless the intermission is about to come up, then hold on to it for after the intermission. This should naturally occur if you are not holding your cooldowns for other reasons, but if you did hold your cooldowns for other reasons, make sure not to waste them in the intermission.
- Save your
Arcane Orb cooldown for when the fireworks land down to quickly AoE them down.
Mechanical Tips
- During the intermission, if you cannot make it to an Amplifier in time
for the shockwave, or if you are doing other things (like channeling a
different Amplifier), you can use
Shimmer or
Alter Time to safely make it through the shockwave. Shimmer can be used to simply go through it. If using Alter Time, you have to place down Alter Time and then move away from your Alter Time, and then re-activate it after the shockwave moved over your snapback position.
Best Talents
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the build directly into your game!
Tips for Stix Bunkjunker for Arcane Mage
Defensive Tips
- Use one of your defensives if targeted by
Incinerator.
- There are no real hard hitting specific mechanics on this fight
(assuming the mechanics are done properly) to activate
specific defensives for, so I recommend simply rotating your defensives
whenever the rot damage starts being high (
Toxic Fumes) or your healers are struggling.
Cooldown Usage
- You will want to align your big cooldowns with when the adds are rolled into
the boss and take bonus damage. When this happens depends on your strategy
and how effective the players in the raid who are doing the garbage rolling
are at the rolling. Generally, I recommend starting off with using
Arcane Surge on cooldown, and as your guild gets into a more consistent pattern, slightly delay your cooldowns when it can align with the adds being dragged into the boss. You should not delay Arcane Surge and related cooldowns more than 10 seconds or so to achieve this.
Arcane Orb can always be delayed for when the adds are up as holding onto it is a minimal damage loss on single target.
Touch of the Magi should be used shortly before the adds are pulled into the boss to ensure that it explodes as the adds are on top of the boss.
Mechanical Tips
- Make sure to use
Counterspell on
Scrap Rockets (from the Scrapmasters).
Best Talents
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the build directly into your game!
Tips for Sprocketmonger Lockenstock for Arcane Mage
Defensive Tips
- Rotate defensives on
Unstable Explosions (the explosion after a Foot-Blaster is soaked). Generally a single minor defensive like
Prismatic Barrier or
Mirror Image will do, but if it overlaps with
Sonic Ba-Boom, make sure to use either
Greater Invisibility or
Ice Cold.
- If you are soaking rockets from
Rocket Barrage, make sure to always have up either
Prismatic Barrier or some other defensive. It is not worth using
Ice Cold on this unless you absolutely have to soak it and you are low health, as you should keep it for nasty overlaps of mechanics like described above.
- If you are soaking a Foot-Blaster, activate
Alter Time right before moving out of the group to the one you will soak, but then after soaking it, do not immediately re-active it. Instead, wait a few seconds until the damage over time effect is (almost) gone before re-activating.
Cooldown Usage
- Use everything on cooldown.
Mechanical Tips
- To minimize damage loss, make sure to use
Shimmer during
Mega Magnetize to move away from the pull in.
- Activate
Alter Time right before the boss reaches 100 energy and casts
Beta Launch, then re-activate it immediately after the boss pulled you away.
Best Talents
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the build directly into your game!
Tips for One-Armed Bandit for Arcane Mage
Defensive Tips
- Note that
Alter Time does not heal you through the heal absorb of
Foul Exhaust, but it does count as healing, so will lower the remaining absorb.
- For the Flame and Coin Token effect of
Reward: Flame and Coin, make sure to cycle defensives.
Greater Invisibility only lasts about half the effects, so use it after a few seconds and not right at the start.
Ice Cold lasts the entire duration so is a great defensive to use for it.
Cooldown Usage
- Use on cooldown. If the adds are about to spawn, you can delay a few seconds if needed, but generally you should use on cooldown and only delay a few seconds at most.
Mechanical Tips
- Make sure to use
Counterspell on the
Overload! casts from the assistants.
- If the Shock and Coin Tokens are inserted and the boss casts
Reward: Coin and Shock, you can activate
Alter Time while far away from the pull in effect and then re-active it when you get close.
Best Talents
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the build directly into your game!
Tips for Mug'Zee for Arcane Mage
Defensive Tips
- During phase 1, the Zee phase is generally higher damage taken, so try to save most of your defensives for this part of phase 1.
- You can soak multiple overlapping circles dropped by soaked mines
by using either
Ice Cold or
Greater Invisibility.
Cooldown Usage
- Timings vary greatly on this fight due to the different available strategies,
where you can move to the different sides at multiple different timers,
and depending on which side you start on.
Try to align your
Arcane Surge with the start of any Zee phases, so maximize cleave damage with the add that spawns at the start of it. Do not delay your cooldown more than 20 seconds or so to achieve this though.
- Make sure to hold your cooldowns so that they are available when the boss
reaches 40% health. Activate
Evocation as the boss is around 41% health so that it finishes as the boss goes into the intermission.
Mechanical Tips
- If you get targeted by
Frostshatter Spear, you can get into position through the slippery effect easily via
Shimmer.
- You can soak the Zee phase mines effectively by activating
Alter Time right before walking into them and then immediately re-activating it after hitting the mine. It will cancel the falling and heal you to full. You can then follow it up by a minor defensive like
Prismatic Barrier and soak the fire circle it leaves behind, or a bigger defensive like
Greater Invisibility and soak multiple overlapping circles.
- During the intermission, after the white arrow soak (
Storming Impact) the boss goes into its rotating mechanic (
Bulletstorm). During this, you can minimize movement by using
Shimmer to move through the Bulletstorm. However, this can be a bit risky as the Bulletstorm is quite big, so a safer approach if you do not feel comfortable doing this, is to activate
Alter Time, then Shimmer away alongside the way the boss is rotating, and then re-activate Alter Time after the Bulletstorm has passed your original Alter Time position.
Best Talents
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the build directly into your game!
Tips for Chrome King Gallywix for Arcane Mage
Defensive Tips
- You can activate
Alter Time before
Scatterblast Canisters and then immediately re-activate it after it went off. The Alter Time heal will not heal you through the heal absorb from
Mechengineer's Canisters, but it will pretty much entirely get rid of the absorb so other healing will work on you almost immediately after the hit.
- Use
Mirror Image right before the boss reaches 50% health so it will last the entire intermission.
- There are many high damage moments on the fight, and which ones you need to use cooldowns on heavily depends on how your group assigns healer cooldowns. However, it is important to keep at least some cooldowns for the intermission, and towards the end of phase 3.
- You can solo soak the phase 3
Tick-Tock Canisters with
Ice Cold if needed. You can also survive it with smaller cooldowns, but if it overlaps with anything else you are at high risk of dying.
Cooldown Usage
- Cooldown usage depends largely on your group's damage, as the boss goes
into the intermission at 50%. You want to use your cooldowns on cooldown
early on, but make sure you have
Evocation +
Arcane Surge ready for the intermission. Generally, this means your first 3 sets of
Evocation into
Arcane Surge should simply be on the pull and then on cooldown, and then your 4th set can be used during the intermission. However, keep an eye out on the boss health and if the boss is close to 50%, delay your cooldowns until 50%.
- Other than that, if possible, you can try to align your cooldowns with adds, but this will depend how fast they are grouped up, so generally I recommend just using them on cooldown and maybe delaying a few seconds if adds are about to spawn.
Mechanical Tips
- If you are carrying a bomb to the coils, you can use
Alter Time before using
Shimmer, so you can re-activate Alter Time to get back in position and refund a Shimmer charge, since Shimmer charges are really valuable, especially in phase 3.
- There are a lot of things to dodge in this fight, but none of them
require any special tricks to handle them properly. Make sure to make
good use of the free mobility you get from
Slipstream to move, so you can keep your
Shimmers only when you really need them.
Best Talents
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the build directly into your game!
General Defensive Usage Notes
Arcane Mage has several defensive spells that you should plan to use and rotate
throughout mechanics. You should opt to use the smaller cooldown spells often
as needed with incoming mechanics and save bigger cooldowns like Ice Cold
for large incoming damage.
Prismatic Barrier
Mass Barrier
Alter Time, although technically does not reduce damage, it is an incredible tool to heal yourself to full health after a big hit
Mirror Image
Greater Invisibility
Ice Cold /
Ice Block
General Damage Cooldown Usage
Arcane Mage has a few cooldowns to think about using optimally on the fights in Nerub-ar Palace:
Evocation +
Arcane Surge — Our main 1.5 minute cooldowns. Slightly lower in practice due to
Shifting Power
Touch of the Magi — Our "mini-burn" 45 cooldown, slightly lower in practice due to
Shifting Power.
Since Evocation can be used
during movement or even if the target cannot be damaged, you can use it
in as preparation for when you actually want to damage the boss. For example,
right at the end of an intermission, while the boss is becoming active,
you can cast Evocation so that it finishes right as the boss becomes targetable.
In addition to the general rotation, you want to keep in mind that your goal is to use your cooldowns as often as possible during an encounter. With that in mind, your secondary goal is to use them at the correct time.
Changelog
- 20 Mar. 2025: Removed unneeded sections.
- 16 Mar. 2025: Updated alter Time usage on healing absorbs due to Alter Time healing changes.
- 13 Mar. 2025: Added Gallywix tips and updated some boss tips based on live kills.
- 01 Mar. 2025: Added tips based on PTR.
- 20 Feb. 2025: Guide added.
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.
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