Arcane Mage Midnight Playstyle and Rotation Guide

• Spellslinger
• Sunfury

General Playstyle

Arcane Mage is all about building a massive Arcane Barrage, casting as many Prismatic Bolts as possible and unloading as much damage as possible during your burst windows: Arcane Surge and Touch Of The Magi. Arcane Barrage and Prismatic Bolt! are by far your highest damaging abilities, but that does not mean you can cast them freely.

Spellslinger

All Spellslinger builds currently play Arcane Orb and talent into Orb Mastery. With this build, you should cast Arcane Orb on cooldown in AoE, and thanks to Orb Mastery, you'll always shoot 3 Orbs instead of 1.

Additionally, each Arcane Splinter you automatically fire (thanks to your Spellslinger hero talent tree) has a 25% chance to grant you one Arcane Salvo stack.

The talent Polished Focus makes Arcane Barrage worth using only at 20 Arcane Salvo stacks. Therefore, your objective is to build up Arcane Salvo stacks with Arcane Missiles and then use Arcane Barrage as soon as you reach 20 stacks.

As of 12.1 patch you also want to make sure that you fire as many Prismatic Bolts as possible, since they are by far your highest damaging ability, and you don’t want to overcap them.

Sunfury

What primarily scales your Arcane Barrage damage is Arcane Missiles, which can only be cast when you have a Clearcasting proc. Each wave of Arcane Missiles grants 1 stack of Arcane Salvo, making Arcane Missiles extremely important.

Clearcasting procs are mostly random and can occur after any Arcane spell is cast, with a few exceptions. Arcane Surge, Touch Of The Magi, Prismatic Bolt! and Arcane Barrage during Arcane Soul each guarantee a Clearcasting proc.

Outside of that, there is no way to force or game them. Arcane Missiles also serve as an Arcane Charges generator, where all of the builds are casting Arcane Barrage if you have Clearcasting available and below 12 Arcane Salvo stacks, because it allows you to get your Arcane Charges back due to the talent High Voltage. Arcane Blast functions mainly as a Clearcasting fishing tool and a filler spell.

Cooldowns

It’s extremely important to use Arcane Surge and Touch Of The Magi on cooldown and always together. Arcane Surge has a 1.5-minute cooldown, while Touch of the Magi has a 45-second cooldown. This timing allows for an extra use of Touch Of The Magi in between each Arcane Surge.

Mages typically refer to this as the “Big Burn” (when Arcane Surge and Touch of the Magi are up together) and “Miniburn” (a standalone Touch of the Magi). It is essential that you never delay the Miniburn Touch of the Magi, as doing so will desync your cooldowns.

Defensives

Mage is, by default, the squishiest class in the game without using any defensives, but they also have access to some of the best defensives if used properly.

Prismatic Barrier: The most spammable Mage defensive. It places an absorb shield on you and has a 30-second cooldown by default, which can be reduced by 5 seconds with the talent Barrier Diffusion. As of Midnight, all Mage barriers are on a shorter GCD than your other abilities.

Ice Cold / Ice Block: The biggest Mage defensive cooldown. Ice Block makes you immune but also prevents you from casting anything, whereas Ice Cold grants 70% damage reduction, is off the GCD, and allows you to cast spells while active. Most Mage players prefer Ice Cold for this reason. It is on a 3-minute cooldown by default, which can be reduced to 2.5 minutes if talented into Permafrost Bauble.

Alter Time: One of the best Mage defensive cooldowns, but extremely difficult to use. The first time you press it, it snaps both your location and current health. Pressing it a second time teleports you back to the snapshotted location and health. Use this defense when you are about to take a big hit, then press it again to restore your health and position.

Refractive Images: 10% of damage you would take is instead dealt over 8 sec. Casting Mirror Image increases this effect to 30% for 15 sec. Very reminiscent of Brewmaster’s Monk Stagger mechanic. With this defensive, Mirror Image actually become a relevant button for Arcane Mages.