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Skavenger's Super-Ultra-Hyper-Mega-Nuke Arcane Mage build
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Skavenger's Super-Ultra-Hyper-Mega-Nuke Arcane Mage build
Skavenger Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:26 pm
Hi everyone! Im sure some of you have raided with me, and seen me pull 12-15k dps+ on most fights (and sometimes more! 
). You may be thinking, he has 6200 gearscore, thats how he does it, but in all reality its all in your build. As Lich or Orakos can attest to, when they first met me I was pulling 8-11k+ with a 4700 gearscore, so while gear defintely HELPS, you can still do nice damage, even with low end gear. My intent with this guide is to not only give you my build, but also to explain WHY you are putting points into the stuff you are. By doing this, im hoping to give all mages a better understanding of how their talents affect their damage. Also, if you picked Troll as your race for your mage, give yourself a high five! You will also need to remember that you want to use Molten Armor on ALL fights, as it boosts your crit. And now onto the build! 
(Pictures of talent trees coming soon)
For these talents, i will put them in the following format ( NAME OF TALENT - points to put in it/max u can put in it - why you are putting points in it). If i dont name a talent, then it has zero points in it
ARCANE TREE ------- 56 Points total.
Arcane Subtlety - 2/2 - Reduces Threat from your spells. Simple enough, makes it harder to pull aggro from the tanks.
Arcane Focus - 3/3 - Makes your spells cost 3% less mana, and boosts your hit by 3%, making it so you can reach the hit cap with minimal gear with hit.
Arcane Concentration - 5/5 - Any spell you cast will have a 10% chance of making the next spell cost zero mana (known as a clearcasting state). This helps you conserve mana on those longer fights.
Student of the Mind - 3/3 - Total spirit gets increased by 10%. Since Molten Armor adds a large amount of your spirit to your crit rating, this effectively boost your crit chance too,
Focus Magic - 1/1 - (single target buff) The player you cast this on will have their crit chance boosted by 5%. Also, whenever they crit, YOUR crit also geets boosted by 5%. Ideally, you will cast this on another mage, who will also cast it on you, essentially giving you both a fight long 10% crit chance buff!
Arcane Meditation - 3/3 - Lets you continue continue regen'ing mana at a 50% rate while in combat. Without this, you will almost DEFINITELY run out of mana on longer fights.
Torment the Weak - 3/3 - Your spells will deal 12% more damage against slowed or snared target. On fights with adds that can be slowed (Deathbringer's Blood Beasts are a good example), this will combine with slow to allow you to nuke the adds quickly with minimal to no damage to the raid from the adds.
Presence of Mind - 1/1 - Makes your next spell an instant cast. Best used in a macro (will go into mage macros later in the guide)
Arcane Mind - 5/5 - Boosts your int by 12%. Combined with Mind Mastery, this also boosts your Spell Power.
Arcane Instability - 3/3 - Boosts you spell damage AND crit chance by 3%. Pretty much a no brainer, lol.
Arcane Potency - 2/2 - After gaining clearcasting from Arcane Concentration, or using Presence of Mind, your crit chance will increase by 30%.
Arcane Empowerment - 3/3 - Adds 45% of your spellpower into extra damage on your Arcane Missiles, 9% of your spellpower into your Arcane Blast, making them hit much harder. Also gives a 3% damage buff to the entire raid!
Arcane Power - 1/1 - When used, makes your spells cost 20% more mana and do 20% more damage for a period of time.
Arcane Flows - 2/2 - Reduces CD of Presence of Mind, Arcane Power, and Invisibility by 30%
Mind Mastery - 5/5 - Adds 15% of your intelligence to your spellpower. Seeing as how mages have TONS of int, this will bost your spellpower by a nice amount.
Slow - 1/1 - Slows your target, and combined with Torment The Weak, deals bonus damage also.
Missile Barrage - 5/5 - Gives your Arcane Blasts a 40% chance to proc <Missile Barrage>. This proc makes your next Arcane Missiles cost zero mana, and fire CRAZY fast! Also, the t10 set bonus gives you an 18% haste increase for 5 seconds after using this proc.
Netherwind Prescence - 3/3 - Boosts your Haste by 6%. Arcane mages rely on haste as a primary stat, so this is also a no brainer.
Spell Power - 2/2 - Your criticals will do 50% more damage.
DO NOT PUT A POINT INTO ARCANE BARRAGE. ALL IT DOES IS WASTE A GCD CYCLE FOR MINIMAL DAMAGE, REDUCING YOUR DPS. USE FIREBLAST AND CAREFULLY TIMED ARCANE BLASTS AND MISSILES FOR WHEN YOU HAVE TO MOVE.
FIRE TREE --------- 3 points total
Incineration - 3/3 - This will increase the Crit Chance of Arcane Blast by 6%.
FROST TREE ---------- 12 points total
Frostbite - 2/3 - Quite honestly, these points are put here just to unlock the next level of frost talents, lol.
Ice Flows - 3/3 - Reduces the Cooldown time of your Icy Veins spell by 20%
Ice Shards - 3/3 - Increases the Crit damage of your frost spells by 100%. This is useful for AoE dps on large mobs (the trash in ICC is a good example). Just keep using blizzard on the group and watch your dps climb to 20k and above!!!!
Precision - 3/3 - Makes all spells cost 3% less mana, and boost your hit rate by 3%. Combined with Arcane Focus, this SUBSTANITALLY reduces the amount of hit you need from gear to reach the hit cap.
Icy Veins - 1/1 - VERY important ability to have, as it makes all your spells cast insanely fast for about 20 seconds.
PROPER GEARING AND STAT PRIORITY
When choosing gear, you will want to look for certain stats over others. You should look for stats on gear in this order. Also, I HIGHLY recommend farming enough EoT's to buy the iLvl 245 trinket, Talisman of Resurgence. This gets used in a macro I provide later on to do INSANE burst damage.
PRIMARY STATS
Haste - The single MOST important stat for an arcane mage. The more haste you have, the faster you cast, simple as that. High haste can turn your 3 second Arcane Blast cast time into 1.5 seconds and less! At about 1200 haste it feels like you are in bloodlust all the time. There is a haste cap, however, you will know when you hit it because your Arcane Blast cast time will be exactly 1 second. It can never go lower than 1 second, unless you are in bloodlust or icy veins.
Spell Power - Just about as important as Haste, this will make your spells do more damage.
Critical Chance - Not as important as Haste or Spell Power, but still extremely useful. A lot of your talents will give you bonus Crit damage on your main spells.
SECONDARY STATS
Intelligence - With this build, your intelligence directly adds to your spell power, so while pure spell power is preferable on gear, intelligence will also boost your spell power.
Spirit - Much like Intelligence, Spirit directly affects another stat, this time your Crit Chance. So while pure Crit Chance is preferable on gear, Spirit will also boost your crit chance. DO NOT LET ANY IDIOT IN A RAID TELL YOU SPIRIT MAKES AN ITEM "FOR HEALERS ONLY". MAGES GET A HUGE BENEFIT FROM SPIRIT. THE ONLY STAT THAT DEFINES AN ITEM AS "FOR HEALERS" IS MANA PER 5 SECONDS.
STATS TO STAY AWAY FROM
+ Mana Per 5 seconds. - You already have adequate MP5 from your talents. If you see an item with Mana per 5 Seconds, dont even roll on it. It is for healers, and will make you look like you are just stacking gearscore.
GEMMING
If on a budget, feel free to use the cheaper versions of these gems.
Red sockets - Runed Cardinal Ruby (+23 spell power)
Yellow Sockets - Quick Kings Amber (+23 Haste)
Blue Sockets - Use two of the (+23 Spirit) blue gems so that your meta works, and for the rest use either of these green gems (+12 Crit,+10 Spirit) OR (+12 Haste,+10 Spirit), or this purple gem (+12 Spell Power, +10 spirit)
Meta Socket - Chaotic Skyflare, all the way. This will boost your crit damage by a nice amount. You will need two BLUE socket gems (blue, not purple or green) so that it is activated though.
GLYPHS TO EQUIP
Im only listing the major glyphs to equip. Minor glyphs arent important from a dps point of view, and are just personal preference.
Glyph of Arcane Blast - Increases the damage buff of your Arcane Blast spell by 3%.
Glyph of Molten Armor - Gives you and extra 20% of your spirit as Crit Chance when Molten Armor is active
Glyph of Arcane Missiles - Makes your Arcane Missiles criticals do 25% more damage
MACROS
Type /macro into your chat window and hit enter. Then click New Macro, and name it whatever your want (I named mine "NUKE"). For the macro itself, enter this:
/cast Presence of Mind
/cast Icy Veins
/cast Mirror Image
/use Talisman of Resurgence
If you are a Troll, you can add /cast Beserking (racial) between PoM and Icy Veins. If you havent bought the Talisman of Resurgence, then remove the /use Talisman of Resurgence line from the macro, also.
SPELL ROTATION
At the start of a boss fight, I like to stack my Arcane Blast 3 or 4 times, until Missile Barrage procs, Then, i use the "NUKE" macro above, followed by Arcane Missiles. After Arcane Missiles, I stack Arcane Blast 3 or 4 times to proc Missile Barrage again, and then use Arcane Power. After Arcane Power, use Arcane Missiles again.
After doing all that, follow a pattern of stacking Arcane Blast 3 or 4 times, to proc Missile Barrage, use Arcane Missiles, and go RIGHT back to stacking Arcane Blast again. It is literally Arcane Blast x3 or x4, Arcane Missiles, repeat. Also, keep an eye on the cooldowns for Arcane Power, and all of the abilities in your macro. When the Cooldowns are up, use Arcane Blast and the Macros as soon as they are available.
Thank you for reading this guide, and I hope I have not only helped you increase your DPS output, but also brought you a better understanding of how your mage works. If anyone has ANY questions about anything mage related, you can reply here or /w me ingame!
). You may be thinking, he has 6200 gearscore, thats how he does it, but in all reality its all in your build. As Lich or Orakos can attest to, when they first met me I was pulling 8-11k+ with a 4700 gearscore, so while gear defintely HELPS, you can still do nice damage, even with low end gear. My intent with this guide is to not only give you my build, but also to explain WHY you are putting points into the stuff you are. By doing this, im hoping to give all mages a better understanding of how their talents affect their damage. Also, if you picked Troll as your race for your mage, give yourself a high five! You will also need to remember that you want to use Molten Armor on ALL fights, as it boosts your crit. And now onto the build! (Pictures of talent trees coming soon)
For these talents, i will put them in the following format ( NAME OF TALENT - points to put in it/max u can put in it - why you are putting points in it). If i dont name a talent, then it has zero points in it
ARCANE TREE ------- 56 Points total.
Arcane Subtlety - 2/2 - Reduces Threat from your spells. Simple enough, makes it harder to pull aggro from the tanks.
Arcane Focus - 3/3 - Makes your spells cost 3% less mana, and boosts your hit by 3%, making it so you can reach the hit cap with minimal gear with hit.
Arcane Concentration - 5/5 - Any spell you cast will have a 10% chance of making the next spell cost zero mana (known as a clearcasting state). This helps you conserve mana on those longer fights.
Student of the Mind - 3/3 - Total spirit gets increased by 10%. Since Molten Armor adds a large amount of your spirit to your crit rating, this effectively boost your crit chance too,
Focus Magic - 1/1 - (single target buff) The player you cast this on will have their crit chance boosted by 5%. Also, whenever they crit, YOUR crit also geets boosted by 5%. Ideally, you will cast this on another mage, who will also cast it on you, essentially giving you both a fight long 10% crit chance buff!
Arcane Meditation - 3/3 - Lets you continue continue regen'ing mana at a 50% rate while in combat. Without this, you will almost DEFINITELY run out of mana on longer fights.
Torment the Weak - 3/3 - Your spells will deal 12% more damage against slowed or snared target. On fights with adds that can be slowed (Deathbringer's Blood Beasts are a good example), this will combine with slow to allow you to nuke the adds quickly with minimal to no damage to the raid from the adds.
Presence of Mind - 1/1 - Makes your next spell an instant cast. Best used in a macro (will go into mage macros later in the guide)
Arcane Mind - 5/5 - Boosts your int by 12%. Combined with Mind Mastery, this also boosts your Spell Power.
Arcane Instability - 3/3 - Boosts you spell damage AND crit chance by 3%. Pretty much a no brainer, lol.
Arcane Potency - 2/2 - After gaining clearcasting from Arcane Concentration, or using Presence of Mind, your crit chance will increase by 30%.
Arcane Empowerment - 3/3 - Adds 45% of your spellpower into extra damage on your Arcane Missiles, 9% of your spellpower into your Arcane Blast, making them hit much harder. Also gives a 3% damage buff to the entire raid!
Arcane Power - 1/1 - When used, makes your spells cost 20% more mana and do 20% more damage for a period of time.
Arcane Flows - 2/2 - Reduces CD of Presence of Mind, Arcane Power, and Invisibility by 30%
Mind Mastery - 5/5 - Adds 15% of your intelligence to your spellpower. Seeing as how mages have TONS of int, this will bost your spellpower by a nice amount.
Slow - 1/1 - Slows your target, and combined with Torment The Weak, deals bonus damage also.
Missile Barrage - 5/5 - Gives your Arcane Blasts a 40% chance to proc <Missile Barrage>. This proc makes your next Arcane Missiles cost zero mana, and fire CRAZY fast! Also, the t10 set bonus gives you an 18% haste increase for 5 seconds after using this proc.
Netherwind Prescence - 3/3 - Boosts your Haste by 6%. Arcane mages rely on haste as a primary stat, so this is also a no brainer.
Spell Power - 2/2 - Your criticals will do 50% more damage.
DO NOT PUT A POINT INTO ARCANE BARRAGE. ALL IT DOES IS WASTE A GCD CYCLE FOR MINIMAL DAMAGE, REDUCING YOUR DPS. USE FIREBLAST AND CAREFULLY TIMED ARCANE BLASTS AND MISSILES FOR WHEN YOU HAVE TO MOVE.
FIRE TREE --------- 3 points total
Incineration - 3/3 - This will increase the Crit Chance of Arcane Blast by 6%.
FROST TREE ---------- 12 points total
Frostbite - 2/3 - Quite honestly, these points are put here just to unlock the next level of frost talents, lol.
Ice Flows - 3/3 - Reduces the Cooldown time of your Icy Veins spell by 20%
Ice Shards - 3/3 - Increases the Crit damage of your frost spells by 100%. This is useful for AoE dps on large mobs (the trash in ICC is a good example). Just keep using blizzard on the group and watch your dps climb to 20k and above!!!!
Precision - 3/3 - Makes all spells cost 3% less mana, and boost your hit rate by 3%. Combined with Arcane Focus, this SUBSTANITALLY reduces the amount of hit you need from gear to reach the hit cap.
Icy Veins - 1/1 - VERY important ability to have, as it makes all your spells cast insanely fast for about 20 seconds.
PROPER GEARING AND STAT PRIORITY
When choosing gear, you will want to look for certain stats over others. You should look for stats on gear in this order. Also, I HIGHLY recommend farming enough EoT's to buy the iLvl 245 trinket, Talisman of Resurgence. This gets used in a macro I provide later on to do INSANE burst damage.
PRIMARY STATS
Haste - The single MOST important stat for an arcane mage. The more haste you have, the faster you cast, simple as that. High haste can turn your 3 second Arcane Blast cast time into 1.5 seconds and less! At about 1200 haste it feels like you are in bloodlust all the time. There is a haste cap, however, you will know when you hit it because your Arcane Blast cast time will be exactly 1 second. It can never go lower than 1 second, unless you are in bloodlust or icy veins.
Spell Power - Just about as important as Haste, this will make your spells do more damage.
Critical Chance - Not as important as Haste or Spell Power, but still extremely useful. A lot of your talents will give you bonus Crit damage on your main spells.
SECONDARY STATS
Intelligence - With this build, your intelligence directly adds to your spell power, so while pure spell power is preferable on gear, intelligence will also boost your spell power.
Spirit - Much like Intelligence, Spirit directly affects another stat, this time your Crit Chance. So while pure Crit Chance is preferable on gear, Spirit will also boost your crit chance. DO NOT LET ANY IDIOT IN A RAID TELL YOU SPIRIT MAKES AN ITEM "FOR HEALERS ONLY". MAGES GET A HUGE BENEFIT FROM SPIRIT. THE ONLY STAT THAT DEFINES AN ITEM AS "FOR HEALERS" IS MANA PER 5 SECONDS.
STATS TO STAY AWAY FROM
+ Mana Per 5 seconds. - You already have adequate MP5 from your talents. If you see an item with Mana per 5 Seconds, dont even roll on it. It is for healers, and will make you look like you are just stacking gearscore.
GEMMING
If on a budget, feel free to use the cheaper versions of these gems.
Red sockets - Runed Cardinal Ruby (+23 spell power)
Yellow Sockets - Quick Kings Amber (+23 Haste)
Blue Sockets - Use two of the (+23 Spirit) blue gems so that your meta works, and for the rest use either of these green gems (+12 Crit,+10 Spirit) OR (+12 Haste,+10 Spirit), or this purple gem (+12 Spell Power, +10 spirit)
Meta Socket - Chaotic Skyflare, all the way. This will boost your crit damage by a nice amount. You will need two BLUE socket gems (blue, not purple or green
) so that it is activated though.GLYPHS TO EQUIP
Im only listing the major glyphs to equip. Minor glyphs arent important from a dps point of view, and are just personal preference.
Glyph of Arcane Blast - Increases the damage buff of your Arcane Blast spell by 3%.
Glyph of Molten Armor - Gives you and extra 20% of your spirit as Crit Chance when Molten Armor is active
Glyph of Arcane Missiles - Makes your Arcane Missiles criticals do 25% more damage
MACROS
Type /macro into your chat window and hit enter. Then click New Macro, and name it whatever your want (I named mine "NUKE"). For the macro itself, enter this:
/cast Presence of Mind
/cast Icy Veins
/cast Mirror Image
/use Talisman of Resurgence
If you are a Troll, you can add /cast Beserking (racial) between PoM and Icy Veins. If you havent bought the Talisman of Resurgence, then remove the /use Talisman of Resurgence line from the macro, also.
SPELL ROTATION
At the start of a boss fight, I like to stack my Arcane Blast 3 or 4 times, until Missile Barrage procs, Then, i use the "NUKE" macro above, followed by Arcane Missiles. After Arcane Missiles, I stack Arcane Blast 3 or 4 times to proc Missile Barrage again, and then use Arcane Power. After Arcane Power, use Arcane Missiles again.
After doing all that, follow a pattern of stacking Arcane Blast 3 or 4 times, to proc Missile Barrage, use Arcane Missiles, and go RIGHT back to stacking Arcane Blast again. It is literally Arcane Blast x3 or x4, Arcane Missiles, repeat. Also, keep an eye on the cooldowns for Arcane Power, and all of the abilities in your macro. When the Cooldowns are up, use Arcane Blast and the Macros as soon as they are available.
Thank you for reading this guide, and I hope I have not only helped you increase your DPS output, but also brought you a better understanding of how your mage works. If anyone has ANY questions about anything mage related, you can reply here or /w me ingame
!Last edited by Skavenger on Thu Mar 22, 2012 1:41 am; edited 1 time in total
Skavenger- Posts : 9
Join date : 2012-03-20
Re: Skavenger's Super-Ultra-Hyper-Mega-Nuke Arcane Mage build
Skavenger Wed Mar 21, 2012 9:59 pm
ALSO..... CHECK OUT MY MAGE SPECIFIC ICC TACTICS GUIDE IN THE RAID SECTION!!!! XD
Skavenger- Posts : 9
Join date : 2012-03-20
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