Arcane Mage DPS Guide - Midnight

By Porom Updated: 2026/03/04

Arcane Mage Overview Arcane Mage Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths

Weaknesses

Arcane Mage Cheat Sheet Arcane Mage Changes in Midnight

Nether Precision has been removed, along with all tie-ins from other talents and effects. This dramatically reshapes how we deal damage, the biggest impact has been that Arcane Missiles just deals more damage on its own.

Arcane Harmony has been renamed Arcane Salvo and is now more thoroughly tied into the spec and hero tree with many other talents and abilities interacting with it to some degree, however. Arcane Barrage remains the only ability that can consume the effect.

Evocation no longer grants Siphon Storm while channeling, this overall lowers our burst, however Touch of the Magi has been buffed up to compensate a bit.

Arcane Tempo is now just a straight haste buff instead of a maintenance buff.

Impetus now just makes Arcane Blast gain 2 Arcane Charges instead of being a random chance.

Orb Barrage procs based on Arcane Salvo instead of Arcane Charges, this has been one of the more impactful feeling changes as it feels like you can't really benefit much from this talent anymore.

Many talents were removed that were mostly passive. Of note in this category, Magi's Spark, Energy Reconstitution, and Leydrinker all had cool animations and will be missed.

Among the talents that were added to compensate the above removals, Overpowered Missiles and Orb Mastery are very cool.

Intuition reworked completely, no longer restores Arcane Charges.

How Splinters deal damage was reworked and the ability for Arcane Splinter to embed themselves into targets for damage over time was removed. Instead, splinters do their entire damage up front and have a chance to spawn a bunch more splinters in the same manner as before.

Multiple tie-ins with Arcane Salvo that trigger on consuming stacks or help generate stacks. Force of Will does something now, woo!

Glorious Incandescence reworked completely, no longer restores Arcane Charges.

Overall, Sunfury changed significantly, with less damage embedded in your own spells and more damage tied to Meteorite generation.

More damage is tied to random procs as opposed to the cyclical proc nature of Spellfire Spheres, which has been reworked from generating every 6th cast of Arcane Blast or Arcane Barrage to having a chance to proc from many abilities.

Merely a Setback was reworked to actually be very strong for us, 8 seconds of a persistent barrier effect, on top of the low cooldown of Prismatic Barrier, means a significant amount of our time will be covered by the defensive effect. Sunfury is going to be a powerhouse defensively for Arcane, and thats without even looking at Time Twist as the choice for this, which is also very strong.

The damage reduction effect was removed from Mirror Image and Greater Invisibility, these spells are now just a threat tool and invisibility spell. Mirror now has a talent to reduce its cooldown, so you can have it up for every burst window and, likewise, Greater Invis still has a nerfed version of it's sprint option.

Shifting Power was removed, effectively making our cooldown cadence locked in at 90 seconds apart.

Ice Floes was removed, leaving no alternative to Shimmer, so you'll only ever not play Shimmer when you need the stun/root break from Blink.

Mass Barrier was removed, probably one of the most fun defensives we have ever had, RIP.

Several cool passives were removed and replaced with really poorly designed passives, I cannot emphasize enough how bad our class tree was made during the alpha/beta of Midnight. Improved Remove Curse alone is just a giant red flag that they didn't care about what they put into this tree.

There are also a lot more throughput nodes that you will pickup that passively add damage without any effect or impact to your gameplay or aesthetics.

In a minor saving grace, the global cooldown on all Mage barrier spells was reduced from a full GCD to half.

ClearcastingSpellfire Spheres Arcane Mage Hero Talents: ]Spellslinger and ]Sunfury Arcane SalvoArcane BlastArcane BarrageArcane MissilesArcane OrbArcane ExplosionArcane SurgeArcane SoulAshes of InspirationArcane SurgeArcane SplinterArcane Orb Playing an Arcane Mage in Arcane SurgeTouch of the MagiTouch of the Magi

Mana Management: This is something many newer players struggle with, however it is important you remember going out of mana is perfectly fine, especially after your miniburn. Simply use Arcane Barrage to clear your Arcane Charges which throttles your mana spend and continue with the rotation. Mana problems can be tilting, but we are a cooldown-based spec first and our main cooldowns give us all the mana we need for those windows. Just remember to breathe when you run out of mana; Barrage and move on!

Arcane Charges: Arcane Charges are generated by Arcane Blast, Arcane Explosion, Arcane Pulse, Arcane Orb, Touch of the Magi, and lastly when talented into High Voltage. The only ways to clear them is Arcane Barrage, Arcane Missiles with the talent Charged Missiles or waiting around while out of combat; spending charges with Barrage makes it hit harder and cleave. Arcane Charges increase the mana cost of Blast and Pulse and their damage. This creates a loop where you want to use Barrage to reduce the mana spend at times so you can ensure a successful Miniburn. Take your time and build muscle memory for the relationship your spells have with Arcane Charge generation. In AOE the opposite is often true where you usually want to get 4 Arcane Charges and then Barrage, that said this is weighed against the next resource.

Arcane Salvo: Arcane Salvo is fairly straight-forward, usually using Arcane Barrage at max stacks or in conjunction with a way to quickly refund Salvo stacks or Arcane Charges. There are a lot of ways that Salvo interacts with each hero talent and our spells and abilities and as such you should definitely spend the time to read those talents and understand the interactions as they will be relevant later on. Remember you can use the search function in the talent system to identify the talents that actually interact with Salvo!

Don't Sit on Cooldowns: Arcane Surge gives us a huge refund on mana on top of the damage increase and other effects for the hero talents. This means holding this cooldown essentially tanks other aspects of the rotation, causing us to run out of mana more frequently, Barrage more without Salvo, causing a cascade of failures downstream in our potential damage. Our cooldowns are also short and on a low cooldown. it is almost always better to squeeze in as many as you can over the course of a fight or dungeon. That said, don't be afraid to volunteer to hold cooldowns for a specific problem in an encounter, as one of the strengths of short cooldowns is to provide targeted damage when you need it most without losing many uses. But as I said above with regards to mana management, your cooldowns are what give you mana to play with and also make that mana worth more, make sure you're using them as much as possible to fuel the arcane engine!

Gearing an Arcane Mage in Mastery >> Haste > Critical Strike >= VersatilityIntellectRaidbotsGreat Vault What Professions are Best for Arcane Mage?TailoringBest in Slot gear What Race is Best for Arcane Mage?GlideDwarfNight Elf

Damage & Performance: Currently, Pandaren, Troll, Orc, Mechagnome, and Void Elf are all respectable options with varied options and its not a huge gap to many others. The big thing is that you avoid the following; Vulpera, Lightforged Draenei, Undead, and Earthen.

Mythic+ & Utility: Dwarf or Night Elf are the best options here, as they both have utility that allow you to negate some Mythic+ challenges. Dwarf giving poison cleanse and Night Elf allowing you to Shadowmeld to dodge projectiles and break enemy casts.

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Tags: PvE

Comments

Comment by 1320202

◾Every race except for Night Elves and Tauren can play a Mage.

Night Elves can be mages.

Comment by 1807671

So all classes nerfed or it's only mages? :)

Comment by 1959589

This guide misses the fact that voidelfs have Preternatural Calm
Which can make a huge difference in fights.

Also, shimmer now replaces blink.
"Combined, they can get as many as four teleports in a short space of time." Which teleport am i missing?

Comment by lynspottery

I do not see Dark Iron Dwarves listed for mages in this posting. In fact I do not even see regular Dwarves listed. It appears who ever is writing these "guides" has overlooked them.

I created my DID about 4 mos ago and have been leveling her casually. Last week I reached lvl 64 now I have decided to concentrate on her more, but its rather disheartening to see other races discussed and DIDs not even mentioned.

Comment by Willowwhisp

Why is there no blood elf in the Patchwerk SimC build?

Comment by juana

thank you

Comment by FriendlyMage

While this guide is a good resource, I would not recommend joining any of the mage community discords for anything but links to other guide information.
The community tends to be unfriendly, unhelpful or--worse still--purposely obtuse towards players they deem unworthy.
All in all, it's far from welcoming and the community managers suffer from a lack of good leadership skills and a preponderance of self-importance.
Information-sharing communities should be a safe space for new players and questions to be worthy of the name, and these groups fall well short of that mark.

Comment by 1833958

The fact that on raid, raid/cleave and delves/open world (literally almost all of the trees) spec points they chose Cryo-Freeze, which makes your Ice Block heal you, while simultaneously choosing Ice Cold, which replaces Ice Block...maybe it's worth making some personal adjustments on this one.

Personally I switched that 1 or 2 points on Cryo-Freeze to Diverted Energy (on the right side of the tree about the same height), which will have some of the same effects but for spells you still actually have.

Comment by Nap5t3R

Are the Spec talents visible? Mine does not show after 3 levels down

Comment by Magishan

Is anyone else seeing arcane explosion sitting in the fire spec tree? WTH?

Comment by Aquatection

In the removed section it doesn't list Shifting Power but as far as I can tell it is gone right? I can't find it anywhere. (on a side note I'll miss ice floes and without Siphon Storm Evocation seems questionable at best).

Arcane Mage DPS Guide - Midnight

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