Arcane Mage Playstyle and Rotation Guide

The Arcane Mage rotation and gameplay changes when you get the new 4-set bonus from the Tier Set. As such, I will outline both in this section of the guide.

General Rotation

Going forward with Arcane for 10.2 we will go back to our old 10.0 DF rotation and I will give a small breakdown for the reasoning behind it in this section.

Since we’re losing our 10.1 tier set from Aberrus, our rotation hasn't changed by a lot, only our CD usage with Arcane Surge, Radiant Spark, and Touch of the Magi. Losing the 4p from Aberrus, we won’t have the mana regeneration, which means we cannot use Arcane Surge on pull like we used to do in 10.1.

The general idea of the opener will remain the same, but the order for Arcane Surge, Radiant Spark, and Touch of the Magi has changed.

I will break the opener down in the following steps:

1. 15 seconds before the pull, start fishing for Arcane Missiles procs by using Arcane Explosions, or Frost Nova;
2. At 5 seconds before the pull start channelling Evocation for Siphon Storm;
3. At 1 second before the pull, pre pot and precast Arcane Blast Followed by Arcane Orb and Nether Tempest (can’t be prepull since you will lose the Arcane Charges);
4. Spam Arcane Blast until 70%;
5. Cast Radiant Spark followed by 3x Arcane Blasts;
6. At 3 Stacks of Radiant Spark refresh Nether Tempest is needed and Cast Arcane Surge;
7. Cast another Arcane Blast to reach 4 stacks of Radiant Spark and follow up with Touch of the Magi and Arcane Barrage (like we did on 10.1). That will make sure that our last hit of Arcane Blast is inside the Arcane Surge and 4th stack of Radiant Spark window.

The sims have shown with the new 10.2 tier set and our damage will be a bit less front loaded. It is a DPS gain to go back to the old rotation inside our burn and mini burn windows since we lean less on Arcane Blast damage now with the new tier set losing spell power from Arcane Surge buff, so we want to make our Touch of the Magi and Radiant Spark window as strong as possible.

Arcane Mages has something we refer to as a "setup." You can read more about it further down the page. However, the "setup" is why we want to delay our Arcane Surge roughly 10 seconds into the pull.

Please consider this when approaching a raid boss, for example, if the raid leader says we need to have CDs ready 2 minutes into the fight to make a DPS check or burst down an add.

Shifting Power usage is a bit freer. This means we can use it anytime we want AFTER we've used spells like Surge / Rune / Spark / Touch (Ideally all together) to get the cooldown recovery for everything.

Conclusion

The idea behind the setup is to have a huge intellect buff from Siphon Storm + Arcane Surge and then dump it into our biggest hitters, such as Arcane Barrage with Arcane Harmony. It’s all about how many Intellect modifiers + Arcane Barrage modifiers we can fit in to make our burst as big as possible.

Now that we understand our setup well, you can read more about the opener below.

Multi Target

The arcane multi-target rotation inside both burn phases is generally the same because most of our AoE damage will come from the Touch of the Magi splash, Arcane Surge, Nether Tempest, and our Arcane Barrage Cleave.

With the introduction of the new Arcane Orb talent from the mage rework, the Arcane mage Aoe Rotation has become very simple and straightforward. We want to emphasize our gameplay on as many Arcane Barrage Arcane Orbs procs as much as possible. In order to achieve that we will always dump Arcane Charges at 4 with Arcane Barrage since we have 40% chance to proc a free Arcane Orb. With a bit of luck we can enter that Barrage > Orb > Barrage > Orb Barrage > Orb loop and it’s not only extremely satisfying, it’s also very strong.

Mini Burn with Tier Set

For our Mini Burn phase, not much has changed from our opener.

Generally speaking, with the loss of rune of power the mini-burn phase became significantly easier now that you don’t have to think about syncing or de-syncing Rune of Power with touch of the magi and radiant spark.

Now, as soon as touch of the magi and radiant spark are ready outside of Arcane Surge, you just press them to get them on CD.

That means that outside of Arcane Surge, you will always get a use of touch of the magi and radiant spark, assuming you will press shifting power at a logical time after Arcane Surge fades.

Mini Burn Rotation:

1. Cast radiant spark and nether tempest
2. Cast touch of the magi followed by arcane barrage to make sure our Arcane Barrage is going to hit the target with Touch of the Magi applied to it and continue to build Radiant Spark stacks inside the Touch of the Magi window
3. Continue with filler rotation, cast Arcane Blast with Nether Precision, don’t over-cap Arcane Missiles procs, use Arcane Orb below 2 arcane charges, and use Arcane Barrage if you struggle with mana at 4 charges.

I made a video of me performing the opener with the new tier set into the mini-burn, so it can help you to understand it a little bit more.

I’d recommend using an addon called DeleteManaGem. It makes it so you can easily delete and create new mana gems during the fight while using a macro. Check the addon description for more information. Full credit to Dorovon from Alter Time Discord.

Defensive Usage

As an Arcane Mage you have excellent survivability and mobility at your disposal with Slipstream, Mirror Images, Alter Time, 2x Shimmer, Ice Block, Greater Invis (which also increases your movement speed if talented), and Prismatic Barrier. You also have our new talent, Mass Barrier.

Rotating our defensives properly can significantly increase our chance of living through high sources of incoming damage!

Note: Don’t be afraid to be aggressive with your defensive cooldowns since shifting power reduces all our CDs by 10 Seconds, while on 1 minute CD.

For example, using Ice block, then shifting power on CD every time it’s available will bring Ice Block to roughly a 3 minutes CD instead of 4 minutes.