What follows is a complete analysis to all of the talents, old and new, being released in patch 3.0 and moving forward into Wrath of the Lich King. Each talentis weighted for it’s use “raiding” (end game group content), “solo” (leveling, random quests), and “PvP” (battlegrounds, arenas). Each talent is given a rating as follows, for each area of the game:
- Must have
- Solid
- Okay
- Poor
- Skip it
All talent descriptions are assuming you have maximized the talent.
ARCANE
Tier 1
Arcane Subtlety – Reduces the chance your helpful spells and damage over time effects will be dispelled by 30% and reduces the threat caused by your Arcane spells by 40%.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Skip it
PvP: Must have
The only dispel protection the mage class has, it is an absolute must for any mage seriously considering any sort of PvP. Thankfully, being on the first tier of arcane, it is easily accessible for any build.
As for PvE, the threat reduction is an absolute must for any raiding arcane mage. Solid talent for non-arcane mages, as it helps with AE spam.
Note: You don’t need to put two points in here for most raiding and instances. Tanks produce a lot of threat, so you’ll probably be just fine with one point.
Arcane Focus – Increases your chance to hit and reduces the mana cost of your Arcane spells by 3%.
Raiding: Solid
Solo: Okay
PvP: Solid
A very reasonable place to spend three points. Note that this is all arcane spells, and so also affects things like Polymorph and Blink. While better for a raiding environment, the mana cost reduction is still welcome in PvP. The hit chance is incredibly useful for any sort of raiding, and moderately useful for PvP.
Note: This stacks with Precision in the frost tree, so arcane mages can get 6% hit from talents. At higher gear levels, it’s nearly impossible to avoid having huge amounts of hit rating on your gear. For those arcane mages way over the cap, feel free to drop points from here.
Arcane Stability – Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Arcane Missiles and Arcane Blast by 100%.
Raiding: Solid
Solo: Poor
PvP: Solid
Due to the spell push back changes, talents that reduce aforementioned push back are less useful than they used to be. PvP wise, the usefulness of this talent depends heavily on how often you use these two spells.
Arcane, in PvP, can function perfectly well without ever having to stop moving to cast anything, besides polymorph, though it benefits hugely if allowed to stack ABlast buffs.
PvE wise, the worth of this talent depends on how much AoE damage is being thrown around, and what type of AoE. Generally speaking, you are going to want this to prevent any DPS loss from Arcane Missiles. Consider this sort of a place to throw a couple talent points if you have them to spare.
Note: Again, you do not need to fill in this talent completely if you can count on Concentration Aura in a raid.
Obviously this talent is useless to any mage who does not use these two spells.
Tier 2
Arcane Fortitude – Increases your armor by an amount equal to 150% of your Intellect.
Raiding: Skip it
Solo: Skip it
PvP: Poor
Entirely worthless from a PvE standpoint. From a PvP standpoint, the amount of armor you gain is negligible, even with a large amount of intellect. There are far better survival talents elsewhere. That said, it is still a survival talent.
Magic Absorption – Increases all resistances by 1 per level and causes all spells you fully resist to restore 2% of your total mana. 1 sec cooldown.
Raiding: Okay
Solo: Okay
PvP: Solid
This talent provides mages with a very large chunk of magic resistance. In AoE heavy raid fights, this results in much less damage taken as a mage can reach in excess of 200 resistance just with this and, say, Frost Resistance Aura.
In PvP, this results in a certain amount of glee seeing something like Fear resisted three times in a row. Combined with Mage Armor, this talent can turn a mage into a nightmare for other offensive casters.
Arcane Concentration – Gives you a 10% chance of entering a Clearcasting state after any damage spell hits a target. The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next damage spell by 100%.
Raiding: Must Have
Solo: Must have
PvP: Solid
Over the longer fights that raiding is known for, this talent proves it’s worth many times over. With an emphasis on mana management, any talent to reduce the cost of spells is well worth the investment. While traditionally less useful for PvP due to the shorter nature of the fights, it nevertheless is a solid talent to take for PvP arcane mages, due to the extra crit they receive from Arcane Potency,
Tier 3
Magic Attunement – Increases the range of your Arcane spells by 6 yards and the effect of your Amplify Magic and Dampen Magic spells by 50%.
Raiding: Solid
Solo: Must have
Extra range has never been more than a convenience for raiding. It gives everyone involved more time to react if something goes wrong, i.e. pulling aggro, and the mage slightly more positioning room.
The Damplify magic spell improvments are quite good, if you use those spells in raiding. The extra range is an absolute must for a PvP build, as it affects not only damaging spells, but the almighty polymorph and counterspell as well.
Spell Impact – Increases the damage of your Arcane Explosion, Arcane Blast, Blast Wave, Fire Blast, Scorch, Fireball, Ice Lance and Cone of Cold spells by an additional 6%.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Poor
PvP: Solid
For raiding, this is highly desirable for both fire and arcane builds. Consider it core talent for fireball and arcane raiding mages. Not worth the investment for raiding frost mages, though you will probably need to take it anyway to get Torment the Weak.
A good talent for PvP mages as well; whether you’re arcane, fire or frost, this provides a boost to your damage.
Student of the Mind – Increases your total Spirit by 10%.
Raiding: Okay
Solo: Poor / Solid
PvP: Skip it
Entirely worthless for PvP.
Mildly useful for any raiding build, due to Molten Armor’s spirit -> critical strike chance conversion. Note that this does scale with things like Divine Spirit and Blessing of Kings. In the raiding scenario, it is not unreasonable to expect to gain upwards of 50 additional spirit from this talent, depending on how much Spirit your gear natively has.
For leveling purposes, at lower levels spirit is a stat you typically have to go out of your way to get. And even then, it’s usually not worth getting until you have at least Mage Armor and Arcane Meditation.
However, once you have both of those, spirit can become useful to improve mana regen. This talent, however, does not come into it’s own until you are sporting at least 300 spirit. In other words, probably not useful until you are a level or two into Northrend.
Focus Magic – Increases the target’s chance to critically hit with all spells by 3%. When the target critically hits the caster’s chance to critically hit with spells is increased by 3% for 10 sec.
Raiding: Solid
Solo: Skip it
PvP: Poor
Cast this on another caster who crits very frequently, and you can expect this to basically provide a permanent 3% critical strike boost.
Note: mages can cast this on each other, resulting in a 6% crit boost for each.
Unreliable for PvP, and does not really provide any additional burst potential along the lines of Shatter and Arcane Potency. However, does provide dispel fodder. For best results in PvP, stick this on a frost mage.
Pointless for solo play, unless you can reliably find some other random spellcaster nearby to cast it on.
Tier 4
Arcane Shielding – Decreases the mana lost per point of damage taken when Mana Shield is active by 33% and increases the resistances granted by Mage Armor by 50%.
Raiding: Skip it
Solo: Skip it
PvP: Poor
Finally, after years of Mana Shield being an absolutely horrendous spell, it is now merely bad. With this talent, it now provides a 1:1 damage to mana ratio. While still a very lackluster spell, it can assist you in going for a quick kill if mana won’t be an issue. (As in, you can afford the mana cost for an Incanter’s Absorption proc, and use that burst to get a kill). The extra 20 resistance gained from Mage Armor is marginally useful.
Improved Counterspell – Your Counterspell also silences the target for 4 sec.
Raiding: Skip it
Solo: Skip it
PvP: Must have
Being able to silence opponents, especially druids, is a very powerful tool when used correctly. While deadly against any caster class, it is especially useful to you when you otherwise cannot control aforementioned caster. Like druids.
Note: Silence effects now suffer from Diminishing Returns.
Arcane Meditation – Allows 50% of your mana regeneration to continue while casting.
Solo: Solid
PvP: Skip it
A strong talent, due to hefty chunks of spirit on gear and the arcane tree’s inherent mana cost. Very strong for raiding arcane mages anfd fire mages, or really any mage that can afford the points.
Torment the Weak – Your Frostbolt, Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Blast and Arcane Barrage abilities deal 12% more damage to Snared or Slowed targets.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Must have
PvP: Must have
One of the strongest talents in the arcane tree. No matter what part of the game you are in, everything you fight can be snared or slowed, though not necessarily by you. A “Slow” effect is anything that slows anything. Slowing the mob’s attack speed, casting speed… all of those count.
Every tank can provide a slowing effect. Death Knights via disease (Frost Fever), Paladins via Judgements of the Just, Warriors via Thunder Clap… essentially, you can count on TTW being active at all times in raids and instances.
An absolute must for a raiding arcane. fireball, and frost mages.
Very powerful for PvP as well, as you can nearly guarantee your opponent will be snared or slowed. Mages that can take advantage of Shatter can abuse this.
Incredibly good for solo efforts, too, as again, you can count on everything being snared.
Tier 5
Improved Blink – Reduces the mana cost of Blink by 50% and for 4 sec after casting your chance to be hit by all attacks and spells is reduced by 30%.
Raiding: Skip it
Solo: Skip it
PvP: Solid
The primary awesome of this talent is the Blink mana cost reduction. You will be blinking A LOT in PvP. Nearly every class in the game has received additional abilities to assist with movement. For instance, Protection Warriors can charge whenever they bloody well feel like it. Blink will, most likely, be used every single time it’s cooldown is up. Cutting down on that cost is just a bonus.
The hit chance reduction is fairly meh on its own, it helps somewhat to avoid silly things like Blinking and then immediately getting caught in, say, Frost Nova. You can use Blink aggresively to have the miss chance up when, say, a PoM Pyro is heading your way.
Presence of Mind – When activated, your next Mage spell with a casting time less than 10 sec becomes an instant cast spell.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Must have
PvP: Must have
An absolutely excellent talent for anything imaginable. Note that this doesn’t really provide much of a DPS boost to raids, it’s better suited to popping off instant crowd control. You still need it for Arcane Power anyway, so the point is kind of moot.
Arcane Mind – Increases your total Intellect by 15%.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Must have
PvP: Solid
Intellect goes a long way in raids. More crit, more mana, more mana regeneration from spirit. An absolute must for any deep arcane mage. Still a good talent for PvP, though with the smaller amounts of intellect on gear, consider this more of a place to throw points if you have them.
Prismatic Cloak – Reduces all damage taken by 6% and reduces the fade time of your Invisibility spell by 3 sec.
Raiding: Skip it
Solo: Okay
PvP: Must have
The true power of this talent lies in the fact that it gives you an instant cast Invisibility. Believe me, this is more useful than you think. Timed correctly, you can use this to completely escape any PvP encounter to either survive or reset the given battle. Picture it like Ice Block’s angsty older brother. The 6% damage reduction is a nice plus, in that it affects ALL damage, not just spells or physical.
Arcane Instability – Increases your spell damage and critical strike chance by 3%.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Must have
PvP: Must have
An excellent DPS talent for any type of play. Even if it sucked, it would still be a must have because it’s a prerequisite for Arcane Power and Arcane Flows.
Tier 7
Arcane Empowerment – Increases the damage of your Arcane Missiles spell by an amount equal to 45% of your spell power and the damage of your Arcane Blast by 9% of your spell power.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Solid
PvP: Poor
A must for an arcane raiding mage. The talent is much weaker in PvP; this is due to the weakness of the spells it is buffing. Both AM and AB are very limited in that using them is just begging to get your arcane school locked down.
Arcane Missiles provides a ton of damage in PvP, and this talent ramps it up significantly.
Useful for leveling once you have Arcane Blast and at least several hundred spellpower.
Arcane Power – When activated, your spells deal 20% more damage while costing 20% more mana to cast. This effect lasts 15 sec.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Must have
PvP: Must have
Consider this the Water Elemental to the arcane tree. An absolute must for any PvE or PvP build this deep in the arcane tree.
Incanter’s Absorption – When you absorb damage your spell damage is increased by 15% of the amount absorbed for 10 sec. Total spell damage cannot exceed 5% of your health.
Raiding: Solid (caveat below)
Solo: Okay
PvP: Poor
This talent would be excellent for a deep frost PvP build; sadly, it is positioned in such a way that frost mages could never benefit from this. As it stands, it’s only use is for extremely risky burst potential involving mana shield. As mentioned earlier, IF mana will not be a problem, Mana Shield can be used to absorb a massive attack, thus giving you a massive boost to spell damage, and then you/your team can unleash some very painful burst.
Consider. Mana Shield, rank 9 absorbs 1330 damage before scaling. Mana Shield absorbs more based on your spell damage, at a flat 50% coefficient (I think). Hence, if you have 1500 spell damage, Mana Shield will absorb 2080 damage. Absorb that full amount, and you receive a boost of 312 spell damage. Combine that with a damage trinket and Arcane Power and you have some very serious (almost) on demand burst.
With the caveat, of course, that Mana Shield is the best mana burn ability in the game. Instantly losing 2k mana isn’t healthy.
The “cannot exceed” part is fairly self explanatory. If you have 15000 hitpoints, the spell damage you gain from this talent can’t go any higher than 750.
For raiding, this talent is very situational. You can get a great deal of mileage out of this if you make judicious use of Fire Ward and Frost Ward, even more so if your raid has a Discipline priest who can sling bubbles your way. In other words, a situational talent that is extremely good in those situations.
Tier 8
Arcane Flows – Reduces the cooldown of your Presence of Mind, Arcane Power and Invisibility spells by 30% and the cooldown of your Evocate spell by 2 minutes.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Must have
PvP: Must have
Despite having a name that sounds like an unfortunate sexual affliction, this talent is nonetheless friggin’ awesome. Note that this transforms the stereotypical 3 minute mage into a 2 minute mage. Meaning, of course, that you now have a vanish on a 2 minute cooldown, and your two most powerful burst abilities are now on the same cooldown as a standard trinket, if not less.
This will also give your Evocate ability a two minute cooldown. Incredibly powerful for raiding, as you can plan on Evocating and burn mana accordingly, and if you have Glyph of Evocate, this gives you a major heal for PvP.
Mind Mastery – Increases spell power by 15% of your total Intellect.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Must have
PvP: Must have
Provides a very significant boost to spell damage in any area of the game. Again, slightly weaker in PvP gear due to lower Intellect, but still important if you can spare the points.
Tier 9
Slow – Reduces target’s movement speed by 60%, increases the time between ranged attacks by 60% and increases casting time by 60%. Lasts 15 sec. Slow can only affect one target at a time.
Raiding: Okay
Solo: Must have
PvP: Solid
More effective in PvP now, thanks to Torment the Weak and a reduced mana cost. Just as effective as any frost snare, with the added bonus of being effective to cast on… pretty much anything. Can be combined with Arcane Blast/Arcane Barrage for some very solid burst.
Not really needed for raiding, as you can rely on tanks to provide a slowing effect in order to activate TtW.
Missile Barrage – Gives your Arcane Blast, Arcane Barrage, Fireball, Frostbolt and Frostfire Bolt spells a 20% chance to reduce the channeled duration of the next Arcane Missiles spell by 2.5 secs and missiles will fire every .5 secs.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Solid
PvP: Okay
Excellent for raiding purposes. Extremely strong damage, and one of the very few abilities that actually lets you shout “PEW PEW!” legitimately.
As stated before, PvP is very focused on movement and stopping to cast as little as possible, and the arcane school is a very dangerous one to expose to being locked out. However, because of the massively hasted cast, this is a huge amount of burst damage.
Note: If used in a PvP build, you typically do not need to invest all five points in this. Three or four points will do just fine.
Tier 10
Netherwind Presence – Increases your spell haste by 6%.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Must have
PvP: Must have
Absolutely excellent for everything. This talent works like critical strike chance talents by providing a flat increase to your spell haste. In other words, if you have enough spell haste for a 4% haste value, combined with this talent you will have a 10% spell haste value.
Spell Power – Increases critical strike damage bonus of all spells by 50%.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Must have
PvP: Must have
Absolutely excellent for everything. The mage is a very crit centric class, and this talent provides a very sizable boost to any critical strike damage.
Tier 11
Arcane Barrage – Launches several missiles at the enemy target, causing 936 to 1144 Arcane damage.
Raiding: Must have
Solo: Must have
PvP: Must have
A very strong spell for any type of content. It is on the expensive side, but it splendidly allows arcane to be a very movement friendly tree in PvP. Some mages have derided this spell as “Arcane Lance”, but the name does feel appropriate. Similar to how Ice Lance severely changed how frost operates in PvP, so too does Arcane Barrage completely change the face of arcane PvP.
While not a part of a raiding arcane mages rotation, it is nonetheless something that can be cast whilst moving. Situational, but good in those situations.
E .. great post as always. Thanks for not leaving us Arcane mages till the last this time 🙂
and love the pics … I will have to check out Obsidian Dawn for sure !
Nice guide! Everytime I visit your site, it makes me want to start up a Draenei Mage. I have been wanting to do that for a while, but the last two Mages I played, I got fustrated with…. mainly because my main is a pally and I generally don’t die very easily. Hard to get used to that as a clothie I suppose….. still you have inspired me!
Absolutely A Great guide man, High level of insight as usual in your blog.
IMO a third ranking category “levelling” could be of use for lonely mages out in the cold northend.
Eagerly waiting for the rest!
Great post on deep arcane Euripedes . 🙂 Will you be posting anything as far as lvl 70 and then lvl 80 talent builds?
For instance On Tuesday (if the patch happens) My mage will be 10-0-51. raid spec.
For frost raiding do you think arcane is still the best support tree, or will fire have some advantages in the first few teirs?
Also for lvling I think 100% will be a good time.
/discuss
Rixxy
Excellent post and another vote for a leveling ranking (we’ll all be doing it amirite?) Frost has been a friend for leveling to this point, but I’d love to give arcane a shot if it’s viable.
One question… how does haste affect missile barrage? Is if it was a 2.5 time spell, or did they screw up and make this buff stack with haste? In which case with 10% haste, we’re looking at a .5 reduction in cast time…
and excellent point on the pushback changes affecting arcane stability. with arcane barrage, you really dont need a non interruptable spell anymore.
Ima still crying over discovering that the “50% percent reduction to magic effects” doesnt kick in until level 71 mage armor. Warlocks will go on unganked because of this slight!
There will likely be an entirely different post about leveling, what talents to take and so forth. There will also be a post discussing end-game style builds.
An excellent idea to add a separate score in these for leveling talents, nonetheless. Will add that into the frost one upon release, then retroactively patch it in to arcane and fire.
Haste affects missile barrage normally.
I like some of the ideas and thought you have pointed out. I like to play the 3 minute spec so this whole patch is going to become a hurdle for me. I agree with most of what you are saying but I rarely ever use arcane missles. I hate them really. They lock me into one place too long, in TBC they were a joke in comparison to the quick instant cast bursts which left me mobile. Maybe it is because I play more of a hybrid I don’t know. I am looking at a 51/20/0 spec. This leaves my raid casting rotation on a raid boss as
Arc barrage, Scorch until CD on Arc Barage is up and debuff is from Improved scorch is on the target. Presence of Mind Arcane Instability, Pyroblast , Arcane Barage, Fireball spam until I need to reapply the debuff only to repeat the Presence of Mind Arcane Instability, Pyroblast , Arcane Barage when the cool downs are up. I am not sure if it works though. I know it sounds good and looks good hypothetically. I have another question about the instant cast invisibility talent. Considering that as soon as you go invisible you are removed from combat couldn’t the instant cast invisibility help or act as an ice block in a PVE environment provided the aggroed target is at a distance? I have not played betas and I am not sure how this eventually all pans out.
Well, I broke down and rolled my third Mage like two days ago. Draenei Female on Runetotem named Dradias (yeah i am not very inventive with the naming if you look at my other toons). Just dinged level 11, and it is going really really smooth so far, only 1 death and 3hrs 45 min played. It kinda helped that before doing that, I read over every single one of your posts. Lots of good info! Thank you for blog and I can’t wait to see the leveling post.
“couldn’t the instant cast invisibility help or act as an ice block in a PVE environment”
Yes. Yes it does. It is, essentially, an instant “get out of combat free” spell.
Version 1.1
Added in ratings for “Solo” play.
[…] Arcane * Fire * Frost Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)MageMage PvP GuideKeeping Yourself […]
Version 1.2
Updated introduction.
Changed descriptions to all three first tier talents to reflect the modern raiding environment.
Changed description to Arcane Subtlety to reflect the changes made in patch 3.0.8.
Downgraded Student of the Mind’s rating to “Poor” in raiding, reflecting spirit’s continual mediocre usefulness and the changes to Evocation. Also changed the description.
Added a notation to Improved Counterspell.
Downgraded Arcane Meditation to reflect new Evocation mechanics.
Overhauled Torment the Weak.
Updated Incanter’s Absorption.
Updated Arcane Flows.
Updated Slow, and downgraded it’s rating to “Okay” in raiding.
Updated Missile Barrage, and added a notation.
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