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Arcane Missiles

Arcane Missiles
40 yd range
Channeled
Requires Mage (Arcane)
Requires level 24

Launches five waves of Arcane Missiles at the enemy over 2 sec, causing (23.5% of Spell power) Arcane damage per wave. Generates an Arcane Charge.

Arcane Missiles' damage is increased by 50% per Arcane Charge.

Arcane Missiles has a chance to be activated after each of your damaging spell casts. Limit 3 charges.

Spell Details

Duration

2 seconds

School

Arcane

Mechanic

n/a

Dispel type

n/a

GCD category

Normal

Cost

None

Range

40 yards (Long)

Cast time

Channeled

Cooldown

n/a

GCD

1.5 seconds

Effect #1

Apply Aura: Periodic Dummy
Interval: 400 milliseconds

Effect #2

Apply Aura: Periodically trigger spell
Interval: 400 milliseconds

	Arcane Missiles

Effect #3

Apply Aura: Modifies Pushback Reduction (9)
Value: 100%
Affected Spells:

	Arcane Missiles

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Mage DPS Guide

Ranged DPS
Overview -
Tips and Specs

Warlords of Draenor
Mage Changes

[Outdated] Arcane Mage
PvE Guide 5.4

Comments

Comment by Maple

This spell is one of the best looking spells in the entire game, in my opinion. If you've seen it, you'll know what I mean. All those blazing purple missiles coming out of the mage's hand, streaking towards the hapless target. It brilliantly illustrates how mages are the best at burst damage spells.

Comment by Deja

With the new talent changes, an arcane spec and good damage gear I have seen mages hit for 650+ per AM, the damage along with the fact that while channeling the global cooldown is not ticking makes this an incredible spell.

Comment by roirraw

Arcane talent is probably the best for anyone who wants to be a good damage doer, but also a good crafter of water, food, and a good teleporter.

Comment by skitzosmeagol

Its true finally arcane is now PVE viable, because with 3/3 Arcane meditation and Mage armor you would think you get +45% mana regen, but in reality you gain 66% because right when you cast AM you start regen as if you were OOC, i could confound on it but thats it in a short. The spell power crits are amazing now especially with Arcane power.

Comment by joshka

like jmills said, with the new patch, arcane is becoming a much better tree to invest talent points in. with some new talents, arcane mages are critting 800+ with their arcane missiles Oo. try getting hit with that, dang.

Comment by skitzosmeagol

Let me get this out so i can benefit a majority of the arcane mages. Since patch 2.0 Blizzard initiated a series of new macros, one is extremely beneficial to Arcane mages, and most classes at that matter. The following macro:

/castsequence Arcane Power, Presence of Mind, Zandalarian Hero Charm, Fireball, Fire Blast.

Will do the folowing, you press this macro once it activates AP, press it a second time and it will use POM, third=ZHC, fourth=Fireball, Fifth =Fireblast. This macro is extremely effective, because you can substitute anything in for example.

/castsequence reset=target Corruption, Curse of Agony

Everytime you target someone and press this twice it will apply those dots, and once u switch targets it will reset and reapply corruption and COA when you press it 2 more times etc..

Note: This macro will not reset unless given the command ( reset=Xtime(30=30seconds), reset=combat, reset=target.) so if you do not have one of those previous reset command after /castsequence it will not reset. ex: I press the macro and it casts the first spell, I wait 10 minutes and press it again it will cast the second spell. So these reset commands allow you to customize your macro :)

Comment by xejin

I love the look of AM, and would love to spec Arcane and use it as my primary attack. I know, the DPM isn't ideal - but I'm going for flavor. My biggest issue, and here's the deal breaker for me, is that AM often omits the first missile. So, I stand there for 2-3 seconds doing nothing, then I fire one less missile than I should have. Which at 63 means a 20% loss in damage / DPS / DPM; and that's horrid. Until Blizzard fixes this bug, AM is no good. :-(

Comment by Elafein

As blizzard has said, arcane spells are going to be the mage's highest dps spells BUT at a mana efficiency expense...

So it is feassible to even crit for 2000 per missile with AP and a trinket open in a raid (or even higher if you happen to have better equip than mine : p )

just learn to use Arcane missiles at clearcasting or make sure to go for arcane blast till you have 2-3 debuffs before continuing with AM : )

Comment by Serathis

How much spell damage does this spell gain?

Comment by arcanum

Also it should be noted that if you begin the cast of AM, and your target leaves line of sight; it will continue to channel the spell for the full duration (providing you dont get interrupted somehow). This makes it very useful in places such as Blades Edge arena which relies quite heavily on line of sighting others. Unfortunately as you've probably discovered, the same applies to mind flay / drain mana / drain life.

Even as a 17/0/44 pvp mage i picked up Improved AM. Definately worth getting if you're thinking about putting any talents into Arcane.

Comment by yobo

AM being effected by haste has made this deadly. With Icy Veins and
berserking and other haste gear this little spell can be brought down to
2.5-3.2 cast time allowing for mobility. Also AM is the only spell that can crit on individualt ticks.

Also note that with all the resiliance going around ... AM is the only spell
that can keep constant white dmg negating the benifits of resiliance.

When you cast a fireball against a pvp target with resiliance the chance of a crit is reduced and if it crits ... then the overall damage is reduced.
When you cast AM the ticks are white damage and are not reduced by resiliance. Total damage output of an arcane mage's volley of arcane missles equal about or little less then a crit from a fireball from a fire mage.
If arcane missles crit during those vollies then it does more damage then the fireball even if AM crit was mitigated with the enemies resliliance.
Resiliance loses it's benifits.

I AM not saying AM is viable in arena. Arcane will always be a required taste and takes a special kind of player to be good. just pointing out some pros of AM from an Arcane mage.

Comment by hermiona

well i have 1309 +arcane damage and my AM ticks for 780
and imo it's stronger against frostbolt

i did gruul and all karazhan with that specc and if you know how to manage your mana you can do awesome dmg
now i know that fireball is stronger and always will be but
AM is really awesome spell :)
you just have to use it well

Comment by Meggie

Arcane Missiles rank 1 is the only mage spell what actually does "PEW PEW PEW".

Comment by Moodknight

love this spell in 39 bracket, 1k+ dmg with 1-2 crits(as it happens almost every time), 2 casts, 1 enemy dead.

Comment by drjrb

This is actually a buff to missile barrage in many ways. On live 3.3.5 now, missile barrage procs 40% from arcane blast and 20% from select other frequently used arcane mage damage spell. And GOOD arcane mages, whether PvP or PvE are NOT casting AM unless MB procs, and other specs just dont use it. So from what I see so far, half of live MB talent functionality is now inherent in the spell, Its always FREE, and missiles are pumped out every 0.75sec at base (down from 1sec) making it more user friendly for other specs as well.
The major buff is that instead of MB proc'ing 40% from just arcane blast, it procs that often from every offensive spell (frost nova, arcane explosion, blizzard, scorch, pyroblast, fire blast, etc. I can go on and on). And, at one point arcane barrage was planned to proc MB 100%, who knows if that will make it to 4.0.1 ..... Ultimately blizz is planning to increase the usage of this spell across the board as the trend has been.
Those who complain about not being able to be customized any longer are being short-sighted. Your custom aspect comes in to play with the final 10 or so points you have left after you claim your main spec. And yes, you need a main spec to be effective end-game, anyway, if someone tells you diff. they are straight up lying to you. If you have ever wandered why any hybrid specs never lasts long, I'll tell you. Blizz designs the game for a main spec, they are against hybrid specs b/c of the potential for exploits (mainly PvP) and that's why they implemented the new 31 point dedicated tree plans, so the good talents are available earlier in a tree, yet still inaccessible to other specs.

Comment by MinorPandemic

Back in vanilla when I was leveling my mage I found myself unable to train the next rank of Arcane Missles at around level 16 for whatever reason. Naturally, I opened a ticket. The GM couldn't resolve my issue of being unable to train, so he simply granted me rank 8 of the spell, probably not realizing that I was 44 levels short of learning this particular rank.

Comment by Electrospell

This must be a real bug or is it a bad joke. The arcane missiles proc do even proc from remove curse which is really cheap at low lvl. So you can almost spam arcane missiles because remove curse has no cd at all.

Comment by ltaranu

When Arcane Missiles procs now, the spell reads as "Arcane Missiles!" (adding an exclamation mark). So if you're using an add-on where you need to type this in (I found this through Tell Me When), make sure to add in the !.

Comment by revecorp

does any one know the exact casting duration?
the tooltip says 2 seconds but the wowhead database seems to have 2.25 sec.

Comment by Elicor

I've been counting whether the coefficient for Arcane Missiles changed in 4.0.1. Here are the calculations for a lvl 80 arcane Mage.

2/2 Improved Arcane Missiles, so 5 ticks. 3138 spellpower. 1379 total damage per tick. 305 base damage per tick.

1379-305 = 1074 (That's how much spellpower is added per tick)
(1074/3138)*100% = 34,23% (Coefficient per tick)
5*34,23% = 171,13% (Total coefficient)

Let's try differently:
1074*5 = 5370 (Total spellpower added)
(5370/3138)*100% = 171,13% (Total coefficient)

Comment by badley

I'm curious... can this proc off of itself?

Comment by Ravensceen

Currently doing really annoying UI-Pop-up spam....
Really, really annoying.
(4.0.1 build 13205)

Comment by McRaider

Can proc off slow fall, pretty nice in lowbie pvp

Found this really interesting because the tooltip says "Each offensive spell you cast has a 40% chance to activate Arcane Missiles."

I wonder if Slow fall has some yet uncovered offensive purposes o.O Maybe a future raid O.o

Comment by Mageonius

it can proc from slow fall

Comment by Amry

A good "filler" spell, considering that it does decent damage (assuming that all waves managed to hit the target, and even more so if you're Arcane-specced). As an Arcane Mage (Arcanist?), I use it, if available, while waiting for the cooldown of Arcane Barrage to expire.

Comment by RationCat

Races that have the low-level quest "Arcane Missles" must complete that quest before it will proc. For Alliance that's Worgen and Draenei. Learned this the hard way!

Comment by Fyara

Does anyone know if arcane missles only proc for low lvls because my friend who has an 80 frost says it doesnt proc for them anymore, and yet mine does and im lvl 26

Comment by Emlyn

Anybody having trouble with this spell? With all the fighting I've been doing over the last few weeks it never once triggered! Anybody know if this is a glitch or what? I'm a fire mage but always keep a few frost and arcane spells handy cause some enemies are killed faster by them than by fire. My frost spells trigger a fire bonus on those spells so why can't I get the arcane missiles even when I only use the few arcane spells I have?

Comment by geopachela

This Spell is The Quickest When Arcane Mage Recives Missile Barrage

Comment by omgsnapsit

Proc Timer is 19.7 seconds according to weakauras duration pickup algorithm, However the icon under the player portrait describes 19.

When you cast another spell during this time it will reset the Proc Timer of Arcane Missiles!

Comment by Luke20333

The arcane mages secondary nuke spell. Since this spell is now proc-based, the spell is free to cast. Best used every time available to conserve mana while dealing damage. For a straight damage burn (like for a boss or these things need to die now), spam Arcane Blast

Comment by sfbuck415

Since 4.2 arcane missiles seems to proc off itself.

Comment by Mijit

The proc doesn't seem to be 100%, more 80-85%

Comment by Classified64

I'm leveling a mage which is lvl 26 atm and the missile is proccing as it should be (not 100% as the tooltip says, according to gm it's 80-85%). It's proccing from pretty much everything, even polymorph.

The only thing that it doesnt proc from very often is itself, I've had only a proc from itself ONE time and that was on training dummy. No, no dots on it or anything. I cast a fireball (I was like lvl 5...), arcane missile and then arcane missile again.

Comment by Magellos

When did Arcane Missiles get a 100% chance to proc? I looked in all the recent patch notes and found nothing. I did a search on Google and read that apparently it's a bug, but I made a new mage and it seems at level 3 to have a 100% proc chance off my fireball.

Comment by Shurai

How does one work out how much damage this does based on say, 7000 spell power and again if factoring in talents such as Improved Arcane Missiles and Missile Barrage?

Comment by asmodai

The current proc of 100% is wrong. I had it confirmed by a CSR that it is, indeed, a 40% proc rate. The tooltip is wrong and will be fixed in a subsequent patch.

Comment by GWARslave

Can someone explain why offensive spells don't 100% trigger the missiles like it says? I've had instances where I've cast 10+ spells with no trigger...

Comment by Gorthen

It isn't procing off itself lol. Notice it only does it twice after you cast Arcane Blast? You're getting a proc from casting Arcane Blast, and if you use Arcane Missiles fast enough, you also gain a proc from the Slow applied by Arcane Blast. :)

Comment by OmniusPrime

What wierd confluence of events might cause it to never activate at all? I have a L78 Frost Mage, am currently doing the "kill 20 deathshadow agents" daily, and after killing 19 of them arcane missiles has never once been available to cast. Not that I particularly need it, things are dying fairly quickly, but it's still curious. Any ideas?

Comment by Gambolputty

In MoP, Arcane Missiles have a 30% proc chance from all offensive spell casts that hit their target.

Comment by Hoaxx

So, I started a Mage and I have a question about this spell.

Does this spell work best when you have 4 Arcane charges?
And it doesn't consume them?

Then, is it best to use Arcane Missiles before Arcane Barrage for maximum DPS?

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