Method Arcane Mage Guide - Talents - The War Within 11.0.2 (2024)

Talent Builds

Sunfury Talent Build Note:

Any time you are specced into Sunfury in the raid and there are more than 1 target then you should change Savor the Moment to Sunfury Execution in the Sunfury Hero Talent tree.

The damage you gain from barrage cleave + barrage execute and sunfury execution is too strong to pass on, which makes Arcane Mage have an insane funnel/execute profile.

C4DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYMbmtZBzwYW8A8AmZYMNzsMDAAAAAADAYmZaZWWmBAiNAAAAAA2AYZGDmZmZGDzMGzMjZmZMMG

C4DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYMbmtZBzwYW8A8AmZYMNzsMDAAAAAADAYmZaZ2WmBAiNAAAAAA2AYZGDzMzYYMmZGjZmZmZmhxA

C4DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYMbmtZBzwYW8A8AmZYMNzsMDAAAAAADAACYmZWWWmZiFAAAAAA2AYZGDzMzMDDzMGzMjZmZmhxA

C4DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYMbmtZBzwYW8A8AmZYMNzsMDAAAAAADAACYmZWWWmZiFAAAAAA2AYZGDzMzYYMmZGjZmZmZmhxA

Class Talents

Going into The War Within, some of our Class talents received changes, these are the most important ones:

• Ice Nova and ring of frost are now on the same row.
• Supernova and Dragon’s Breath are now on the same row (Supernova will likely see more play, since we don't have to be in melee to stop mobs and it deals damage).
• Barrier Diffusion - Whenever one of your barriers is removed, reduce its cooldown by 4 seconds (works very well with mass barrier).

We also still have access to Mass Barrier, Cold Snap, Greater Invis and all our utility from Dragonflight.

Spec Talents

Arcane Mage has some new talents; I'm going to highlight some of the important ones that are worth mentioning:

• Aether Attunement - this is basically our old tier set “Arcane Artillery“, after 3 times we consume clearcasting our arcane missiles will deal 100% increased damage and cleave up to 4 additional targets.
• High Voltage - Damage from arcane missiles has a 10% chance to grant you arcane charge (works with Aether Attunement). This talent is extremely powerful and another source of arcane charge generation; when we have 0 arcane changes we don’t really want to cast arcane blast and with arcane orb on cooldown this talent helps us get our charges quickly.
• Magi’s Spark - our touch of the magi now creates a magi’s spark on the target, causing the damage from our next missiles, blast and barrage to explode for 100% of their damage. Once all 3 abilities are consumed inside our touch of the magi windows magi’s spark explode for 400% to nearby targets.
• Nether Precision - now also increases our next 2 arcane barrage or arcane blast damage by 30%; this is a pretty big interaction when we play spellslinger, since we will be casting a lot of barrages, especially on AoE.
• Arcane Debilitation - a stacking damage buff target takes from our spells like missiles, arcane barrage and arcane blast by 1%, multiple damage events can overlap.

Hero Talents

Spellslinger

Spellslinger is a very unique hero tree that interacts with our gameplay in a way that makes us an arcane orb and arcane splinter machine gun.

I will note some of the important hero talents and what they do:

• Splintering Sorcery - whenever we consume Nether precision, we create 2 arcane splinters that deal damage and fire at our target.
• Splintering Orbs - the first enemy we hit with an Arcane orb creates 2 Splinters and increases our Arcane orb Damage by an additional 10%.
• Spell Frost Teachings - direct damage from arcane splinters has a chance to launch an arcane orb at 50% effectiveness and increase all damage dealt by ANY arcane orb by 10% for 10s. This has insane synergy with orb barrage and arcane splinters because we create so many arcane splinters.
• Shifting Shards - Shifting power fires a barrage of 8 arcane splinters at random targets within 40 yards while we channel it. Arcane splinters can create arcane orbs, you can already see where this is going right?
• Augury Abounds - arcane surge creates 8 arcane splinters and during arcane surge, when we create arcane splinters we have a 100% chance to create another splinter.
• Controlled Instincts - for 8 seconds after we hit enemies with arcane orb, 20% of the damage dealt by an arcane splinter will now splash to all enemies nearby (reduce beyond 5 targets).

Sunfury

Sunfury is more of a bursty hero talent tree which gives a lot of front loaded damage and buffs multiple talents in our hero tree, we’re going to go over the most important ones:

• Spellfire spheres - every 6 times we cast arcane blast or arcane barrage we create a sphere
• We slowly generate spheres when we are out of combat.
• Spellfire sphere - increase our spell damage by 2%, stacking up to 3 times.
• Burden of Power - creating a sphere increases the damage of our next arcane blast or arcane barrage by 30%. This is an EXTREMELY powerful talent that we have to pay attention to, since it also synergies with nether precision and we can double dip on nether precision with this. This is by far the most important thing to track when using the sunfury hero talent tree as an Arcane Mage.
• Invocation Arcane Phoenix - when we cast arcane surge, we summon an arcane phoenix. This arcane phoenix will aid us for the duration of arcane surge, casting random fire and arcane spells (for example, meteor or arcane barrage, or many other spells).
• Mana Cascade - casting arcane blast or arcane barrage grants us 1% haste for 10 seconds, stacking up to 10 times.
• Glorious incandescence - Consuming burden of power causes our next cast of arcane barrage to call down a storm of 4 meteors on our target. This is a powerful talent as it can cause us to enter a loop of arcane barrage with nether precision and works with our 4p.
• Roundurmancy - spheres can now stack up to 5 times.
• Memory of Al’ar - while under the effect of Arcane surge (not a proc from time anomaly) we gain double the stacks of mana addiction. When our phoenix expires, it buffs us, granting us Arcane Soul for 3 seconds and an additional 0.5 second for each spell our phoenix cast.
• Arcane soul - arcane barrage granting us clearcasting and generates 4 arcane charges. This is something we have to pay close attention to, since we want to line this up with Burden of power. Which means we can basically spam 4 charges barrage for the time of this proc, and we want to try and line this up with nether precision so it's gonna look something like: barrage > missiles (for nether precision) > barrage > barrage.