Arcane mages use the power of their own mana and of course the arcane arts to devastate their enemies with explosive power. I'm going to show you everything you need to know to succeed in the war within season one as an arcane mage. And this will be very beginner friendly while also giving you everything you need to know if you are a veteran as well. We're going to jump straight in with the stat priorities. Now of course intellect is your primary stat and the way you're going to get this is a higher and higher eye level or item level of your gear.
And this is your top priority when you are gearing. Now the stat priority you do see here is the general priority you're going to want to follow for your secondary stats. However unless you're comparing two items that are the same eye level I wouldn't worry too much about it.
Going on to the secondary stats, we have haste, which is going to actually increase your attack speed and how quickly we cast our spells. Then we have critical strike, giving you an extra chance to do more damage. We have versatility, increasing damage and healing done, and also reducing damage taken. Mastery, which for us arcane mages in the War Within is savant, increases your mana regeneration rate and your maximum mana.
Later in this video I'll be explaining why mana is so important to us arcane mages and how we'll be utilising it. Arcane charges increase the damage of arcane blast by an additional amount and arcane barrage by an additional amount and it increases all other arcane damage done. If you're not sure what those things are, again don't worry, I will be explaining it in full in the rotation part of the video.
Quickly looking at the set bonus for arcane mages in season 1. we have Sparks of the Violent Rebirth, or Violet, not Violent. Two set Arcane Blast and Arcane Barrage damage is increased. Two of our core spells there, just a flat damage increase. And the fourth set, when casting Arcane Blast or Barrage, we have a 5% chance to make our next Arcane Barrage deal more damage and generate the full four Arcane charges. Very straightforward there on the set bonus.
And again, if you don't know what that means, don't worry. I'll be explaining it all in full. So now we're going to look at the utilities and some of the defensives, etc. that we have available to us as a mage.
Now I am specifically saying mage here because these are not specialization utilities. These are actually available to you no matter which spec, Frostfire or Arcane, you are going with as a mage in the war within. So if you would like to try out some other classes, which I have done guides for, then feel free.
You won't have to relearn all of this part of the video. So on the left here, we have things that are more affecting other people, so our enemies, and on the right hand side, we've got some really useful abilities that are actually enhancing us and our allies. Now, there are a lot more utilities that I could go through, but I don't want to overwhelm you as this is a beginner video, and these are the core and important ones I think you should know about. When you're more comfortable with your specialization, I would recommend going through the spellbook here.
and just seeing what's what. The same would be with the mage talent tree on the left of your talents. So then, starting off, we have Polymorph. This is going to transform your enemy into a sheep, incapacitating them for an entire minute, and they cannot take any actions.
They will regenerate any health that they have, so if you've got them down to 10% health, it's probably not the best time to Polymorph them, but it will take them out of the action for a while so that you can focus on any, you know, friends that they may have lying around. We also have Frost Nova here, which when I use, you can see, has encased my enemies in ice, freezing them in place for 6 seconds. But damage may interrupt that freeze effect.
We also have Slow, which you can see I've put on this enemy here, reduces the target's movement speed by 50% for 15 seconds. We've also got Ring of Frost, which is placeable, so I can place it here, as you can see. Summoning a Ring of Frost for 10 seconds at that location, enemies entering it are incapacitated for 10 seconds. seconds. When the incapacitate expires, they're then slowed by 65% for four seconds.
So it completely stops them in their tracks, and then it slows them a bit after. And lastly, we have Counterspell. This simply will kick, otherwise known as interrupt, the enemy's spellcasting.
So if they're casting a spell, you can interrupt that, and that is really, really important if you're doing PvP or things like Mythic Plus. Not as important in raiding. Still might be if there's certain adds, etc. in the fights, but generally it's more used in kind of mythic blasts, leveling, questing, and PvP.
So going on to the other side then, we've got Ice Block, where you actually incapacitate yourself into a block of ice, but prevents all damage being done onto you. Now you cannot actually use this again for 30 seconds. You'll have a debuff, as you can see up here, Hypothermia. We have Mass Barrier, casting Prismatic Barrier on yourself and allies for... How long for?
Quite a long time, a whole minute, as you can see up here, Prismatic Barrier. absorbs damage, magic damage taken reduced by 25%, duration of all harmful magic effects on you are reduced, and avoidance is increased by 5%. So avoidance here is another stat that we didn't go through in the stat priorities because we only have it sometimes.
Reduces damage taken from area of effect attacks, or AOE, by 5%. We then have greater invisibility, making you invisible and untargetable for 20 seconds, removing all threat. and this any action will cancel the effect. You take 60% reduced damage while invisible. We then have two abilities which we can actually massively impact our allies.
Arcane intellect, one of my favorites. Up here we can see intellect is increased by 5%. This is the primary stat that we use as mages. And when you use this, it will actually go on you, any party members, and any raid members that you are in a group with. You can target people in the wild and also give it to them as well.
Lastly, we have Time Warp. This is otherwise known as Bloodlust or Heroism, increasing the haste of all party and raid members by 30% for 40 seconds, so you've got to cast your spells a lot quicker. And this is the de facto biggest cooldown in the game.
Generally, your raid leader or group leader will call out when to use this. And you can see here, you now have Temporal Displacement. You cannot benefit from time warp or other similar effects for 10 minutes. And this is going to be the same if a shaman uses bloodlust, if an evoker uses, is it a fear of the aspects?
I can't remember what it's called. If anyone uses a similar effect, you will all have that 10-minute cooldown. So whether a mage uses it or a shaman uses it in your group, you all are affected by the cooldown. What I'm trying to say is, if you've used it, a shaman cannot then use bloodlust and use their one. It literally affects the whole group.
Now, as I said... There are more in your spell book that you should probably look through, but again, don't overwhelm yourself. First, let's learn how we're going to play the spec.
These are the general, the most important ones that you are going to be using in the war within. So now on to the fun part, which is the rotation. This is very complex.
Arcane Mage has not gotten easier in The War Within. Arguably, I would say it's even more complex than it used to be. It's gotten absolutely out of control.
But that's okay. I'm going to help guide you through it for the rotation. So we are going to be having to look at certain phases of the rotation and also like burn phases, openers, etc.
We are going in both Mythic Plus and Raiding with Sunfury. Sunfury. It absolutely obliterates all the other hero talents in Mage, it seems.
Which is a bit awkward, isn't it? But that is what it is. So first up, let's have a look through some of the spells that we have. I'm going to take you through the important cooldowns. Arcane Surge.
It's on a 1.5 minute cooldown. Expend all of your current mana to annihilate your enemy target and nearby enemies. Arcane damage based on mana spent. Deals reduced damage beyond five targets.
And generates something called Clear Casting. Now a lot of your arcane spells are going to generate clear casting. You can only use your arcane missiles when you have clear casting.
Another thing this then does is grants mana regen after the fact. So for the next 16 seconds, your mana regen is massively increased and spell damage is also increased. We then have Touch of the Magi, which is off the global cooldown, meaning it can actually be used while using other spells, and I'll kind of show you that.
Applies touch of the mage onto your target, accumulating 25% of the damage you deal for the next 12 seconds, and exploding for that amount of arcane damage to the target, and reduced amounts to nearby enemies. The good thing about this is, because a lot of it is kind of AoE, it does mean that the rotation isn't changing much between Mythic Plus and Raiding, thank god. This will generate four arcane charges. These are this here.
Resources... Resources... Resource used by arcane mages some abilities generate arcane charges which greatly enhance spells such as arcane blast Increasing the damage and mana cost arcane barrage Consumes all charges and enabling it to hit multiple enemies And this is arcane blast blasts the target dealing arcane damage each arcane charge, which is what we just spoke about increases damage by 77% and mana cost by 100% and reduces the cast time.
And this will generate an arcane charge. So again, the more we use it, the more damage we'll do, but the more mana it's going to cost. We do have this talent here, Magi's Spark. Your touch of the Magi, which is the main spell we spoke about just last in the spellbook, now also conjures a spark, causing the damage from your next arcane barrage, arcane blast, and arcane missiles to...
echo their damage this is a passive effect but it's quite important upon receiving damage from all three spells the spark explodes dealing damage to nearby enemies and then we have a for attunement every three times you consume your clear casting remember that's going to be generated by a lot of our arcane spells we gain a for attunement your next arcane missiles do more damage to your primary target and fires up to more nearby targets as well at half the damage Other things we haven't mentioned are mirror image. You can use this before you go into the fight. Damage taken is going to be reduced when you go in, and they're also going to cast spells and attack your enemies. But it's not really a massive damage cooldown, it's more of a defensive. But we can use it before we go into the fight.
because we can and hero talents will affect it as well we also have shifting power on a minute cooldown draw power from within dealing damage to nearby enemies and while channeling your major ability cooldowns are reduced so after using our cooldowns we can use this to then reduce the cooldown on our cooldowns and another one here is evocation increasing mana gen for 1500 for a few seconds and granting clear casting again while channeling evocation your intellect is increased by two percent every 0.5 seconds and it will last 20 seconds lastly we have um arcane surge no i already spoke about that um what haven't i showed you uh arcane orb sorry launch an orb forward from your position traveling and dealing damage through enemies it passes grant an arcane charge every when you cast it and every time it also deals damage so when we go into the fight we're going to do a very specific rotation and opener a few seconds before the pull happens you can cast evocation to get that 20 second buff you Then we can immediately go in with Arcane Missiles. Then you're going to want to use Arcane Surge. Because we've got the massive intellect buff from Evocation, doing our massive Arcane Surge cooldown makes perfect sense.
And we can immediately use Touch of the Magi. You can see here from our hero talents, we are getting an Arcane Phoenix, and that's going to come into the rotation as well. Apart from the opening Touch of the Magi, we will always use Arcane Barrage with Touch of the Magi.
So with Arcane Barrage, can you see it takes a second to get to our target? You will click Arcane Barrage and immediately hit Touch of the Magi so that Touch of the Magi is already on your target or already on before Arcane Barrage hits. But on your opener, you do not need to do that. You just use Touch of the Magi on its own. But only on the opener do you use it on its own.
As soon as you have then done these spells in this order, you're going to immediately cast Arcane Blast, and then Arcane Blast again, generating Arcane Charges. Then you're going to use Arcane Missiles, assuming you have Clear Casting, of course, and then two more Arcane Blasts. So literally, just press everything as quick as you can in this order, and that is your opener.
Then we go on to the normal priority list. After you've expended all your mana, etc., we can use Shifting Power. and that's going to be reducing the cooldowns on our spells. Now, as I said, a lot of your spells are going to generate clear casting.
If we have three stacks of clear casting, we're going to use arcane missiles as a second priority. After that, if we have two or less arcane charges, we will use arcane orb. You can see here I've got three arcane charges, so I'm not going to do that. What I'm actually instead going to do is cast arcane blast.
And you can see now I've got some clear casting. And again, you would only use arcane missiles here if you get three stacks of clear casting. The actual priority goes, it's kind of hard to explain.
You would use arcane missiles if you have three stacks of clear casting. If you've got less than two arcane charges, then use arcane orb, because that's going to generate some. Then we're going to use arcane blast straight into an arcane barrage if we have something called burden of power. If you can ever find something on your talents, etc, you can always search it in this bar here. So you can see here that Burden of Power is actually here in your hero talents.
Conjuring a Spellfire Sphere increases the damage of your next Arcane Blast or your next Arcane Barrage by 30%. Every six times you cast Arcane Blast, etc, you will conjure a Spellfire Sphere. So if you have that buff called Burden of Power...
At that point, this is when we're then going to go, okay, we've got Burden of Power. I'm going to use an Arcane Blast straight into an Arcane Barrage. Then, after that point, we're going to use Arcane Blast if we have something called Never Precision.
And that is actually up here on the talents. Consuming Clearcasting increases the damage of your next Arcane Blast or Arcane Barrage by 20%. So when we actually consume Clearcasting......
which is what we're going to use on our um let's just get some clear casting so you can see here we've got clear casting it's this blue one here your next arcade missiles costs no mana after we consume that can you see up top we've got never precision arcane blast damage is increased by 20 percent and that's when you're going to use arcane blast at this point in the priority list after that if you have any stacks of clear casting we're going to use arcane missiles Because remember, we're only using it here if we have three stacks of Clear Casting. We're using it at this point in the priority list if we have two or one stack of Clear Casting. If we've got nothing else left to press, we're going to use Arcane Blast. And if we're out of mana, we're going to use Arcane Barrage.
And that pretty much forms the core rotation. When evocation is off cooldown, we can do this part here to do our massive damage point and then go back into the normal rotation as well. So it's kind of like a burst phase and a non-burst phase, which is kind of the same on your opener here. It can get a bit confusing. This is a more lighter kind of overview into the rotation I'm getting.
I do try and make these guides a bit more beginner friendly on the arcane rotation. It is... horrifically complex how far into this we can go but that's a general kind of priority that you should be following there there is a few interesting talents like arcane deliberation damaging a target with arcane missiles increases the damage they take from arcane missiles arcane barrage and arcane blast by a percentage and that can actually overlap on stacks as well arcane missiles can also be channeled while moving and evocation can be as well that's really important to note that and consuming arcane charges will also increase your haste by two percent for 12 seconds and that can stack up to five times as well another thing again with clear casting is that gaining clear casting increases your intellect by a percentage for eight seconds again multiple stacks can overlap there don't go into too much depth on these um apart from the ones i already have purely because it's already a quite complex rotation and we will be covering the talents in full but that is fairly it for the raid rotation If we now go over into the Mythic Plus build, you can see, thankfully, only a few talents are actually changing over. Now, the rotation itself will change a little bit. Things like Arcane Orb are going to be a bit more important, as they are going to do a lot more damage.
Now, a lot of our spells do do AoE damage anyway, so it's not too much of a problem. With the Omna, it's pretty much exactly the same. And to be fair, it's fairly similar on the priority list as well with what we're actually doing here. So again, once you get everything done out of the way and on the opener, etc., you can use shifting power. Now, there's actually something else I didn't mention in the first part, which is going to be called your arcane soul.
I don't think I mentioned it anyway. So you'll see here memory of a lot while under the effects of a cost. of a casted arcane surge you gain twice as many stacks of mana cascade this is to do with the hero talents we're going to go into these in full detail in a minute when your arcane phoenix expires it empowers you granting arcane soul plus an additional 0.5 seconds for each exceptional spell that it had cast because that's what your phoenix does arcane barrage grants clear casting and generates four arcane charges and you're going to be using your shifting power straight after your arcane soul expires and then again arcane missiles if you've got free clear castings use it if you've got less than two charges use your arcane orb if you do have burden of power then use arcane blast straight into an arcane barrage using arcane missiles with any clear casting stacks at this point and also using Arcane Blast with any Nether precision stacks that you have as well, sort of here in the priority list.
And if you have nothing else to do, then it is going to be Arcane Blast and then Arcane Barrage if you're out of mana. Now, I've just swapped around the items here for... the second row and what this is showing here is when we go into arcane soul so when you get the um the few seconds of arcane soul here we actually then adopt a different smaller priority list and this is hence why the rotations are quite confusing so what we're actually going to do is we're going to as our top priority use arcane barrage as our last global cooldown our last spell in arcane soul Apart from that, again, we're still using Arcane Missiles as the second priority if we have free clear castings. Then we're going to use Arcane Barrage with Never Precision, Arcane Barrage with any clear casting, and then just Arcane Barrage on its own.
And that is kind of the mini rotation when we are in Arcane Soul. When you are in Arcane Soul, you can ignore your burden of power that I previously mentioned in the raid part of the rotation. And if you can, try and actually end your Arcane Soul with free clear castings as well, so you can go straight into your Arcane Missiles, etc., and normal rotation. and that is pretty much it i do hope that did actually make sense as rk mage is incredibly complex when you look at all these different things that we're having to track and think about all at the same time so for this build we are going to go with sun fury mage now i'm going to go into more detail as this is the new hot thing you know the hero talents and i do also want to say that this is all kind of passives that are already worked into the rotation um and you know these are just kind of what are forming that rotation that you've already seen so we just kind of this is kind of the why you know the what is putting this together so starting off we've got spell fire spheres this is known as the keystone talent every six times you cast arcane blast or barrage you conjure a spell fire sphere while you're out of combat you're going to slowly conjure these over time as well So what does it actually do then? Well really simply it's going to add to your spell power and it stacks up to three times.
Then going down the left side we've got mana cascade. Casting arcane blast or arcane branch grants you some haste for 10 seconds and can stack up to 10 times so up to 10% haste. Your prismatic barrier now grants 5% avoidance while active and 5% leech for five seconds when it breaks or expires.
So just some defensive defensives there. Then we have an option, save at the moment, when you cast Arcane Surge, its duration is extended for each Spellfire Sphere you have, or Arcane Bombardment damage bonus is increased to 130. Arcane Bombardment, Arcane Barrage deals an additional amount of damage to low health targets, which is the one I've gone for. In the middle row, we've got Invocation Arcane Phoenix. When you cast Arcane Surge, you summon an Arcane Phoenix to aid you in battle. Your Arcane Phoenix aids you for the duration of your Arcane Surge, casting random Arcane and Fire spells.
It's just a cool little Phoenix that we're going to get by our side to be casting spells for us, which is really cool. Then we have another choice, Lessons of Debilitation. Your Arcane Phoenix will spell steal when it's summoned and when it expires, or your Supernova becomes Gravity Lapse. The snap of your fingers warps the gravity around your target and four other nearby enemies, suspending them in the air for three seconds. Upon landing, nearby enemies take arcane damage.
Really is up to you. I would go for Lessons in Debilitation, which is simpler, but it kind of just depends on the situation you're in. Codex of the Sunstriders, over its duration, your phoenix will consume each of your Spellfire Spheres to cast an exceptional spell. Upon consuming that sphere, your arcane phoenix will grant you Lingering Embers, which also increase your spell damage done, which is great, of course.
You can see here... They're really quite passive effects that we're getting with these hero talents. They're not really changing the game or how our rotation works massively here.
Burden of Power, conjuring a Spellfire Sphere increases the damage of your next Arcane Blast and Arcane Barrage. Consume Burden of Power causes your next Arcane Barrage to grant four Arcane Charges and call down a storm with some meteorites on the target. Last choice node.
Spellfire Spheres can now stack up to five times, or generating a Spellfire Sphere while your Phoenix is active causes it to cast an Exceptional Spell, which is what I've gone for, because we are looking at using those Spheres. Again, it is up to you. Lastly, it's Memory of Alar. While under the effects of a casted Arcane Surge, you gain twice as many stacks of Mana Addiction.
When your Arcane Phoenix expires, it empowers you, granting Arcane Soul for three seconds. which basically is Arcane Barrage grants clear casting and generates four Arcane charges, plus an additional 0.5 seconds for each exceptional spell that the Phoenix had cast. So TLDR then, we're going to be summoning a Phoenix that's going to be passively doing some damage for us.
We're going to get some extra spell damage. And whenever we cast, or every six times we cast Arcane Blast or Barrage, we're going to get some Spellfire Spheres, which are also going to enhance us and our Phoenix. And that's pretty much it for Sun Fury Mage as an Arcane Mage. It's quite straightforward. It's quite simple.
It isn't changing a lot. I really like it. Looking finally at the consumables and enchants, etc. we're going to use as a Mage in the War Within, a few things have changed.
So Nerubian Gem Weavers, these are the sockets you can add to your gear, which are coming from the Weekly Vault. And we can add these to our head, wrist, and waist. You can also now add two sockets to your neck and both rings with the magnificent duelist settings in the war within.
So two on the neck, two on each ring. Now let's look at the enchants. Winged Grace gives avoidance and reduces fall damage.
Crystalline Radiance gives primary stats or intellect. Chant of Armoured Avoidance is avoidance. Sunset Spellthread gives intellect and stamina. Defender's March increases your stamina.
You can go for scout's march i think it's called which increases your speed instead but a bit squishy i like to go for defender's march um haste on both enchants for the rings unless you're using a different secondary stat depending on maybe you're you know simming your character etc and then the authority of radiant power where basically you have a chance when doing damage to cause a massive amount of damage on your target and also increase your primary stat Then looking at the consumables, you can go for the Flask of Alchemical Chaos. I prefer the Tempered Versatility one because it's giving versatility, meaning we're adding damage but also reducing damage, and it's a pretty nice, you know, kind of overall. flask same as what we were using in the previous expansion and then we can go for the feast of midnight masquerade for intellect tempered potion what this does is it will actually give you all the other secondary stats that you don't get from your flask which i think is pretty neat uh healing potion is called an algari healing potion in this expansion of which is the wall within um algari manna oil you which is nice they are adding back mana oil increases critical strike and haste crystallized augment rune to add intellect if you are still um if you are using augment runes and then the blasphemy is really interesting you can see here we're using different gems so the blast might increases primary stat and it also increases your critical effect of your crits by 0.15 percent per different color gem used meaning if we use an onyx sapphire emerald and ruby then we're going to get 0.60 increased effect whereas if we only used all of one color we're going to get 15 so you want to kind of use these four different colors to get more effect from your blasphemy after that i would say to use the colored gems if you've got more than four four gem slots i would say to simulate your character maybe look at your stat priority and see kind of what you need the most at that point for your character, because it could be different depending on the gear levels you have at that point. Thank you so much for watching this guide. I hope it was really useful for you in The War Within Season 1, whether it was for Mythic Plus or Raiding.
If you do have any questions, I'd be happy to help. My Patreon is in the description below, and that is where you can find my LVUI profiles, which I'll show you in a second. And also I'm putting together a huge macro list for every single spec that's going to be really useful for you in the War Within as well.
I am doing... all classes and specs for the war within so if you are new to the channel then please do click this playlist here to check out what else i have which is all of them there will also be pvp guides on this channel as well for war within season one so make sure to look out for that this here is the ui that i was referring to as you can see we've got um you Target frames, etc. Left and right and raid frames go in the middle here And then weak auras in the middle with an action bar down here chat is behind where my camera is Minimap and details etc are here On the right all of the plater profiles the voodoo the lvi, etc Details profile has all been made by me. And again, you can get this on my patreon should you uh, like it?