Note: Some aspects of this guide may not apply to your character until higher level. If are interested in getting your character to max level quickly, take a look at this leveling guide.
Glyphs come in three varieties, Prime, Major and Minor. Prime glyphs enhance core aspects of your class and generally provide the greatest benefit of the three types.
Major Glyphs, while not quite as powerful as Prime Glyphs, are still useful and continue to provide a myriad of benefits.
Minor Glyphs often times provide small quality of life improvements or visual changes, such as the Glyph of Shadow Form for priests which makes the character more visible through Shadow Form. However, a few are known to provide more significant benefits such as the warrior glyph of Berserker Rage.
Prime Glyphs:
Major Glyphs:
Minor Glyphs:
Here are your highest priority abilities.
Arcane Mages alternate between burn phases and conserving mana. A burn phase is initiated when Evocation is ready to be used along with Arcane Power and Mana Gem, the mage activates Arcane Power and spams Arcane Blast until low on mana, uses a mana gem and then continues.
Once the mage reaches relatively low mana they evocate back up to around 90% to take advantage of their mastery and enter a conservation phase where they alternate Arcane Blast with Arcane Missiles when possible, keeping mana high while waiting for the next burn phase.
Arcane power should be used whenever it’s up, meaning during the burn phase and in-between this while in mana conservation mode as its cool down is half that of evocation, (2 minutes as opposed to 4.)
AoE Rotation
Cooldowns
The most important aspect of managing your cooldowns as a damage dealer is making certain to use them whenever they’re avaliable. Don’t be afraid to use them during any fight, even against trash mobs, as the higher the uptime you have with them, the greater your overall damage will be so long as you aren’t using them when a fight is about to end.
The only time to hold off on using your cooldowns is when you’ll be unable to attack the boss due to fight mechanics, such as during Morchok’s Black Blood of the Earth ability or when Hagara is about to cast Water Shield and become immune to all damage.
Melee DPS will have to watch out for this more than ranged, as they are far more vulnerable to situations where an encounter requires constant movement or the boss is utilizing some form of AoE attack that makes fighting in melee range impossible.
Intellect > Spell Hit Cap (17%) > Critical = Mastery = Haste
Intellect:
Intellect is your primary stat as an Arcane Mage, increasing your maximum mana and the damage of your spells
(17%) Spell Hit:
Hit rating decreases the chance for your spells to miss, and once you reach 17% your spells will no longer miss on bosses, avoiding unnecessary loss of DPS and wasted casting time/mana.
Critical Strike:
Critical Rating increases the chance of your spells critically hitting a target.
Mastery – Mana Adept:
Arcane Mage Mastery increases the damage of your spells based upon the amount of mana you have left.
Haste:
Haste Rating decreases cast time and increases the speed at which DoTs deal damage.
Reforging
When reforging gear, it’s important that you look to reforge from your least effective stat into the most effective for whatever gear goal you are currently aiming for. See our stat priority list for more information.
Spell Hit Cap (17%) > Critical = Mastery = Haste
Your first priority when reforging is to reach the spell hit cap of 17%. Once that goal is achieved you then have a decision to make as to whether you want to pursue more Critical, Mastery, or Haste, all of which are useful and can increase DPS.
Gems
- Red – Brilliant Inferno Ruby
- Blue – Veiled Demonseye
- Yellow – Reckless Ember Topaz – Artful Ember Topaz
- Meta – Burning Shadowspirit Diamond
Unless a socket bonus offers intellect, it’s more effective to gem for pure intellect and ignore the bonus.
Enchantments
- Main Hand/Two-Handed: Power Torrent
- Off-Hand: Superior Intellect
- Helm: Arcanum of Hyjal
- Shoulders: Greater Inscription of Charged lodestone
- Cloak: Enchant Cloak – Greater Intellect
- Chest: Enchant Chest – Peerless Stats
- Bracers: Enchant Bracer – Mighty Intellect
- Gloves: Enchant Gloves – Greater Mastery
- Belt: Ebonsteel Belt Buckle
- Leggings: Powerful Enchanted Spellthread
- Boots: Enchant Boots – Lavawalker
Our class guides for whichever class you’re playing:
Death Knights – Druid – Hunter – Mage – Paladin
Priest – Rogue – Shaman – Warlock – Warrior
The GotWarcraft Gold Guide
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