PvE Arcane Mage Talents, Builds & Glyphs

Arcane Mages have essentially 1 primary talent build and one more build that can possibly see use in extremely quick encounters.

Notable Talents

Focus Magic: Increases the target’s chance to critically hit with spells by 3%. When the target critically hits the casters chance to critically hit with spells by 3% for 10 sec. This talent is incredibly strong when two mages trade it back and forth giving each other a total of 6% critical chance.

Torment the Weak: Frostbolt, Fireball, Frostfirebolt, Pyroblast, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Blast, and Arcane Barrage deal 12% more damage to snared or slowed targets. In raids Frost Death Knights will apply a constant slow to bosses making our spells do 12% more damage.

Icy Veins: Increases casting speed by 20% and prevents spell pushback.

Arcane Power: This is our big “nuke” cooldown. For the next 15 seconds, our spells deal 20% more damage, but also cost 20% more mana — this is when you really use all of your other cooldowns and do as much damage as possible. The 3 minute cooldown means that for most fights, you only get to use this once or twice.

Missile Barrage: Reduces channel time of Missiles by 2.5s and reduces mana cost by 100% when it procs from casting Arcane Blast.

Talent Builds

Standard Build

This is the “core” of the Arcane specialization, leaving you with 5 points to put into a talent of your choosing. Some noteworthy options include:

• Magic Attunement for extra range
• Student of the Mind for 10% extra spirit at 3/3
• Arcane Meditation for mana regen while casting, helpful in longer fights
• Incanter’s Absorption — this talent can offer a large DPS increase when combined with Fire Ward or Frost Ward. However, it relies on taking Fire or Frost damage in order to activate, which will not happen very often
• Last but not least, Arcane Barrage for fights that have a lot of movement or if mana is a problem

Cold Snap Build

This is a variation of the standard Arcane build featuring Cold Snap — sometimes known as 50/0/21.

This build is only really useful for quick fights, as it sacrifices sustainability and crit for Cold Snap, giving you an extra use of Icy Veins.

Glyphs

Major Glyphs

Glyph of Arcane Blast

Glyph of Arcane Missiles

Glyph of Molten Armor

Minor Glyphs

Glyph of Arcane Intellect

Glyph of Slow Fall

You can use any Glyph in the last minor glyph slot — they’re not really that impactful.

Glyph of Fire Ward and Glyph of Frost Ward aren’t as useful if you run an Incanter’s Absorption build as the reflect doesn’t trigger the talent